


Godel's Incompleteness Theorems

by flyingwide



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic, F/F, Found Family, Gunshot Wounds, Happily Ever After, Impact Play, Knifeplay, Mentioned Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Mentions of Suicide, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Painplay, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Series, Psychological Trauma, Relationship Negotiation, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-25 23:37:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 58,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12046680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingwide/pseuds/flyingwide
Summary: Any complex system will eventually generate paradoxes. A sociopath who feels. A martyr who lives to fight again. A life and a home built around the inevitability of mortality.Or: Shaw finds Root after Samaritan's death. They try to sort through the debris left behind and turn it into something they can build a life on.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is the longest thing I have written, by far. It also poured out of me at a rate that was absolutely shocking. The end of the show rattled me just that hard. So I tried to fix it. This started out as a story I was telling myself, giving Root and Shaw their happily ever after, and then became this. And for anyone interested, I made a playlist for the damn thing, found here: [https://8tracks.com/flyingwide/godel-s-incompleteness-theorems-root-shaw]()
> 
> Since this show had such a hard time keeping things in one canon (thanks mostly to David Slack and his "FUCK YOU, FIGHT ME" attitude towards the other writers when it came to Root/Shaw), I am prefacing this by saying that, in this fic, Root and Shaw having been having less-casual-than-they're-convinced-it-is sex since season three. Also, as they refer to the psychiatric hospital that Root was in as both "Stoneridge" and "Ridgestone" in canon, I went with Ridgestone because it was what Root herself called it in 3.17.
> 
> On that note, a final and hearty thank you to my three betas and to Ellie who let me yell about this at her for the last two months. Enjoy the fruit of our labor.

Root blinked awake, staring up at an unfamiliar concrete ceiling. Her eyes tracked the cracks above her as she became further aware of her body. Bitterly unfortunate, she registered the painful pins and needles in her shoulder, the freezing numbness of her fingertips, the ache in her chest that swelled with every breath, the raw pain of her body weight pressing a wound on her back into the hard mattress beneath her. Unable to help herself, a tiny mewl of pain escaped her mouth before she could bite it back.

She heard movement to her left, rapid footsteps heading towards her. Root knew she couldn’t defend herself, not in this state. Turning her head to see who was approaching her, agony blurred her vision as her shoulder twisted with the movement and her chest ached as she drew breath.

“Shh, shh, shh,” a woman’s voice said comfortingly. “You’re all right. Don’t try to move just yet.” Root forced her eyes open to meet the kind gaze of a middle aged black woman with close-cropped hair. The woman’s teal scrubs echoed the shushing noise she’d made as she bustled around the bed, looking at monitors and checking the IV. She moved to Root’s other side and Root wasn’t willing to risk moving her head again just to make sure the woman didn’t stab her in the back. _If she was going to murder me_ , she reasoned, _she could have done it when I was unconscious_. She remembered taking a bullet to the chest, pain exploding through her body as she struggled to breathe and drive before eventually failing at both. _Or she could have not just saved me at all_.

Content to let the woman stay busy behind her, Root looked around at what was more box than room. Cement surrounded her on all sides, the floor standing out with a shine the walls and ceiling lacked. There was a steel door in the corner with a crash bar jutting across it and a tiny glazed hopper window up near the ceiling. White-grey light filtered through and Root thought, almost hysterically, that she couldn’t see anything but shades of grey anymore.

Blue fabric shushed its way back into her vision and Root blinked. “Can you breathe for me, sweetheart?” the woman asked, the endearment natural on her tongue and jarring to Root’s ears. Taking a deep breath automatically, she winced as her lungs expanded and the tightness in her chest grew exponentially. “Rate the pain, one to five,” the woman asked, efficiently moving the stethoscope from her neck to her ears.

Root considered it. She’d had worse, contributing the dulled pain to whatever it was in the IV that was dampening her pain and had kept her asleep. “Three,” she tried to croak out but all that came out was a short guttural groan as her tongue formed the word but her throat refused to vocalize. She didn’t even flinch as the cold diaphragm of the stethoscope pressed against her skin as she breathed, too focused on the dull ache under her skin. Forcing her shaking hand up, she pressed her thumb and pinky together to indicate three. The woman nodded as she moved the circle of metal across Root’s chest before taking a step away. Root closed her eyes against the bright lights above her, the pain radiating so deeply down her arm she could swear even her fingernails hurt.

Feeling a gentle hand on her bad shoulder, she opened her eyes again. The woman had returned with a cup of ice chips, an encouraging smile on her face. Root stared at her then glanced at the cup before her gaze returned to the woman. Paranoia had saved her life more than a few times since her thirteenth birthday but the nervous energy swelling in her compounded by her inability to run, to escape, was making it hard to breathe. Or maybe that was the thoracic injury. Fighting instinct, she reached her right hand up to grab a chip from the cup and slide it into her mouth. The cold felt divine, as did the morphine she could feel being introduced to her system. Root blinked a few times, letting the ice melt on her tongue, before closing her eyes and drifting back off to sleep.

 

The second time she woke, she felt the pain before she even opened her eyes. Pain dulled to an ache, she realized she was laying almost on her stomach, braced on her side by a pillow beneath her chest, as latex-covered hands slid over the skin of her back. She felt strong fingers press down the lines of the square dressing on her back and she gave a soft whimper. There was a click above her head and the world disappeared again.

 

Third time seemed to be the charm. When she opened her eyes, the pain had subsided to a dull throb. Breathing hurt less and her back only felt irritated rather than torn open. When she turned her head, it didn’t hurt. There was no sign of the woman she had seen before but the chair by the door was occupied by a young blonde woman in pink scrubs pouring over what looked like a medical textbook. Apparently, she felt eyes on her and looked up to meet Root’s gaze.

“Good morning,” the woman said with a smile, laying her book aside on the floor and approaching Root. “Let’s get you some ice and see what we’ve got here.” The woman had a slight twang in her voice that made Root think fleetingly of her mother, the voice she could sometimes still hear reading fairy tales, and Root watched the woman as she circled the bed. This time, she risked turning her head to the right, seeing two more doors on the furthest wall. One was open to reveal a bathroom and the other was closed. The blonde woman strode through the closed one and it swung shut again behind her with a sound more a slam than a click. In a few moments, she returned with a styrofoam cup which she held out to Root.

“I’m Abby,” she said, voice friendly as she clicked a few things on the monitor whose screen was just out of Root’s view. “You’ve been with us a few days, you probably don’t remember. Propofol will do that to you. I imagine you’ve got some questions.” Root just watched her, sucking on the ice and hoping the liquid would soothe her throat enough to allow her to speak. “Your lung is healing up well. Entry and exit wounds are about where they should be, though the shoring on your back is probably going to hurt for… well, a while. The skin graft didn’t cover that, you’ve got an artificial one that’s taking nicely. The incision on your chest from inflating your lung is mostly healed and they tried their damnedest not to scar you too bad. Now you’re awake, we can check that shoulder.”

Root blinked at the sudden rush of information, not taking it much of it. “I,” Root managed to say before her voice failed. Abby looked at her kindly.

“Intubation is hell on your throat. But you wanna try tell me your name, honey?”

“Root,” she said. A look of confusion crossed Abby’s face but she smiled and nodded anyway.

“Where,” Root said about the same time as the far steel door swung open. The same woman from before stepped through it, this time in purple scrubs instead of teal. Abby nodded to her.

“I was just about to check her shoulder, Dr. Tanner,” Abby said. Dr. Tanner nodded then turned a smile on Root.

“Would you like to try to sit up?” she asked and Root couldn’t hear anything over the crinkling on the pillowcase under her head as she nodded quickly. Abby braced her up her good side as Dr. Tanner raised the top of the bed to meet her back. Root suddenly felt more human sitting upright and sighed, head falling back and eyes closing. She opened them again when Dr. Tanner took her hand.

“Squeeze my hand please,” she said and Root tried. She felt the doctor’s fingers within her own, clamped down with a little strength and realized it was weak. She tried again with all of her strength but she knew that Dr. Tanner would have been able to break from her grip with little effort.

 _Nerve damage_ , she thought, and panic swelled in her. Dr. Tanner just nodded like it was what she had expected. She gestured to Abby with a quick jerk of her chin and Abby tapped at the monitor again. “Raise your arm please. Elbow at a right angle straight out and then up as far as you can.” Root managed to get her forearm level with her ear before she gasped and relaxed it. “Arm straight out and high as you can.” She did as she was asked, groaning when her arm refused to close the 60° angle gap between head and shoulder.

“You’ll need physical therapy,” Dr. Tanner told her. “We’ll work on grip strength as soon as you’re up to it. It should return in a few months at the latest.” Root sighed. A limited range of motion in her non-dominant shoulder wasn’t the end of the world but permanently losing the strength necessary in her left hand to even press the keys on a keyboard was… unimaginable.

“Where?” Root tried again, throat protesting but at least managing to be understood. Dr. Tanner looked at her and then looked at Abby. Abby nodded and removed herself from the room as Dr. Tanner dragged the rolling chair from the far side of the monitor over to Root’s bedside.

“You’re safe,” she confirmed and Root suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. _No_ , she thought sarcastically, _you were talking about physical therapy because you’re going to put a bullet between my eyes._ “You’re still in New York, just outside the city proper. We were told to bring you here from the hospital.”

“We?” she asked.

“There are a team of us. Six of us. We were all contacted through email, enlisted to join a medical team for… well, we had no idea what for. I thought it was the Brotherhood or maybe Elias’s people coming home to roost. I ignored it at first but the emails were insistent. They used different tactics for all of us but in the end, we did what we were recruited to.”

“What?” Root said, clearing her throat and wondering if she could get through more than one word without her voice cracking.

“At first, it wasn’t anything. Just be on call, have our phones with us, answer a pay phone if it rang.” Root’s blood ran cold but if it showed in her face, Tanner didn’t seem to notice. “Then we were guided here, instructed to turn the basement of an old library into a working hospital for up to four people. So we did. Money was wired to me to pay for the equipment, deliveries were made from all over. We had a hospital and a team of a surgeon, an ER nurse, an OR nurse, a med tech, and an ME. And for reasons we really didn’t understand at the time, a researcher into artificial skin.”

“Did you meet them?” Root asked, the words sounding like they were ripped from her ragged throat. “The emailer.”

Tanner shook her head. “No. She… _they_ just emailed, told us what to do. She called once but the voice was masked. It was like the vocal equivalent of a note made out of letters cut from a magazine. All different female voices. I suppose it could be a man but it always made sense to call Thornhill ‘her’. And it was reassuring to think that it was a woman and not one of the scumbag crime bosses that haunt this city. It was fine with all of us until we were instructed to put together facsimiles. Human facsimiles. That’s where the artificial skin came in. We crafted bodies of five people based on specifications given through email. Damn good ones too. And then nothing. Just ‘Wait’. So we did. Until a few days ago when we all got texts.

“We were to take the version of you that we had made into the hospital morgue where our ME would proclaim it you and send it on to Potter’s Field. Then we had to hide you in plain sight while your trail went cold and your condition stabilized. Then we brought you here. It was all set up last year, like they knew you’d get hurt.”

 _Of course She knew_ , Root thought but didn’t speak. There was always a chance that one of them would be taken out. With Samaritan hot on their heels, She had made Her own plans, put together a team of Her own choosing without Her analog interface as a go-between. “How long?” she asked instead.

“Since you were shot? Six days. You woke up several times. Do you remember?”

Root squinted her eyes against her growing headache. “Two, I think.”

“Your lung should be healed soon enough. You had a tension pneumothorax.” Root nodded slowly, trying not to jar her shoulder. “The entry wound is healing quickly. We had to widen the exit wound to remove bone shards that splintered from the rib the bullet grazed. I removed the cloth that the bullet took with it at the same time. The chest tube caused its own injury but was minimally invasive. But they’re not infected and they’re healing. How’s the pain?”

“Manageable,” she bit out. “But my hand...”

“You had major trauma to two big muscles and the auxiliary nerve of your shoulder. It should heal as they do. Your grip strength will return at least somewhat,” Tanner soothed her. “If you were in a hospital, I’d be ready to discharge you in 48 hours. You shouldn’t be on your own any time soon, however. Is there anyone you can trust to take care of you?”

The question hit Root hard and took her breath away. She’d been too caught up in her own agony and confusion to even think…. “Shaw,” she said and sat up, pulling away from the bed and tugging on the tubes and nodes that connected her to the beeping machine next to her. “I need to leave. I need to find Shaw.” Tanner bodily shoved her back down with more strength than Root had expected.

“You need to heal. It would do your Shaw no good if you die in the street trying to find him.”

“Her. She’s… we were fighting an enemy. I got shot to protect someone and Shaw was-“ Root’s mouth snapped closed. Shaw had been In the middle of a firefight when she last saw her. She could be hurt or worse. Not to mention Harold, who was still pitiful with any type of weapon other than his mind. If John had left him…

Root was pulled out of her panic by a buzzing coming from a table pressed up against the wall. A cell phone rattled its way around on the plastic surface until Tanner walked over and picked it up. She frowned at the screen, brows wrinkling in confusion.

“What does it say?” Root gasped out, clinging to a hope that the Machine would contact her, would contact this medical team She had thrown together at least.

Tanner tossed the phone onto the bed. Root reached to catch it on instinct and her shoulder twinged as the phone landed with a small bounce. “I think it’s for you anyway.”

ADMIN ALIVE

ANALOG INTERFACE ALIVE

ALL ASSETS ALIVE

Root sank back with a deep sigh that sounded far too close to a sob for her own pride. “Thank you,” she whispered but wondered why the Machine hadn’t spoken to her directly, hadn’t whispered in her own ear. “Was my cochlear affected?” she asked absently. Tanner looked up at her, surprised.

“No. Why? Are you having trouble hearing?” she asked, concern evident in her voice even as Root’s mind hyperfocused on possible reasons for the Machine’s silence and took less interest in the stimuli her senses received.

“I’m not sure,” she answered distantly. “But they’re alive.” She clocked Tanner’s confused glance but didn’t allow it to pull her out of her thoughts. “Will you tell them where I am or should I go find them?”

The phone buzzed again and her hand shot out to pick it up.

BATTLE ONGOING

STAY

“What if they need me?” Root demanded.

STAY, the message blinked up again with a buzz.

“What are their chances of survival?” she asked, turning over the thought of a final battle in her head, the simulated battle between two gods trapped in a Faraday cage. The phone didn’t move. “Answer me.” Still it did not buzz.

Root felt a shock of cold wash over her when she realized that there was only one reason the Machine would have kept that information from her. “No. No, I have to help. I have to save her.” She struggled to get up, right arm tangled in IV tubing while her left buckled under the attempt to hold her weight. Tanner pressed her back to the bed hard, meeting Root’s sudden violence with calm. Root yelled her frustration, fear, and agony, thrashing under Tanner’s firm hand. The steel door crashed open a second later, Abby and an olive-toned, dark haired man running in. Abby forced her down while the man inserted something into her IV. She fought to get the needle out before the sedative hit her but Abby held her hands immobilized. With her weakened left arm, Root couldn’t wrench herself away as she felt the darkness closing in around her.

 

She came out of the sedative slowly, awareness growing in increments. Fear gripped her as she pulled on her wrists and they didn’t move. She felt the fire of an amphetamine flowing through her veins just as she had when Control had held her down like this, had flayed her open with chemicals through her like molten knives. Scratching and clawing to get free, she felt like a caged animal. She would have savaged anyone that got close enough to sink her nails or teeth in but could only do damage to herself, bound as she was. She jerked and yelled, fighting to get away from the pain and the memory.

When she came back into herself, her wrists were in padded leather cuffs and strapped to the bed. She wasn’t in a cage with Control, kept from the Machine. She was in a prison of a hospital, kept there by the Machine.

She couldn’t fault them for strapping her down. As far as bodily harm went, she _was_ actually lethal. Killing the medical team that had saved her from both a bullet and from Samaritan wasn’t high on the list of things she had any interest in doing. But if she could have, she would have. Anything between her and Shaw would have to go. Even when that was her own god.

 _It is ending_ , a voice whispered in her head, her own voice echoed back at her, and Root jerked. To hear the words in her own voice was a kind of ache. The Machine had chosen her voice to speak with; she was humbled, flattered, yet heartsick in a way she couldn’t explain and didn’t particularly want to examine.

“Where is she? How is she? How are they all?” Root asked and realized that she wasn’t alone in the room, that three sets of eyes were watching her talk to herself. Her lips twitched in fleeting amusement. If only they knew that She was using their own phones as Her eyes and ears.

Amusement faded as She went silent and Root was left alone in a room that suddenly felt too crowded. Dread filled her like ice water sliding through her veins and she called out again. There was no reply.

“Something’s wrong,” she whispered and heard someone approach. “Something’s wrong, She’s not…” Root clutched at Tanner’s arm as she drew closer. “The emailer. The voice. Have you heard from Her?” Tanner blinked, eyes wide in surprise.

“No, dear. Not for a while now.”

“I just heard Her,” Root said desperately. “But now She won’t answer. My friends were fighting a battle, they were in danger, and now She won’t answer me.” She pulled roughly at the cuffs and bit her lip as she felt tears well in her eyes. “Please. I need to go find them. I need to know how they are. I need to know if any of them survived.”

Tanner looked at her with something like pity and nausea rose in Root’s throat. “Honey, you can’t. Even if you managed to drag yourself through the city like this, you couldn’t do anything for them there.”

“I’ve managed more on worse,” Root snarled and tried to yank her arms from the cuffs. The left one screamed from the effort and she cried out in pain. A dark-haired man, the one who had sedated her before, approached and she lashed out again. “You can’t! I need to leave! I need to find her. I need to find them both. If She’s not speaking to me, it’s because they’re all dead or….” Her heart clenched as the thought hit her but she spit out the words. “Or because She is. And She can’t talk to me.”

“Who is She?” Tanner asked gently, moving towards the foot of the bed. Root recognized it as a ploy to get her attention away from her own IVs but it didn’t make a difference. She couldn’t fight back, not like this. “Is this Thornhill? The voice? The one you talk to? Who texts?”

Root laughed, the sound feeling like it was torn from her raw throat. “You don’t even know what She is enough to mourn Her death. She is the greatest gift to humanity ever created. She is as close to a benevolent god as this world will ever see. So if there’s a chance to save Her _or_ Shaw, I have to try. You have to let me!”

The man stuck another syringe in her IV and she struggled and snarled again. Her strength left her as the dark closed in and she went under again.

 

Root woke up furious, in the dark, and mostly alone. She could see the light from her monitor and hear the annoying beeping that followed it and a small light over by the door as a dark-haired woman sat there with a book. Wondering viciously how badly she’d frighten the woman if she just started screaming, Root pulled on the restraints again. It rattled the rail of the bed and the woman looked up, wide eyes startled. Root let out an angry huff of air and tried again.

She wanted to rage, to demand that this woman release her, to yell that they couldn’t keep her here. But she had no power besides her voice, an arm and chest that ached with every movement, and a skin graft that pulled the skin of her back tight enough to hurt. “Any word?” she said instead and rolled her eyes at the woman’s confused expression. “From the person who contacted you all, who set up this prison pretending to be a hospital. Has She contacted you? Any of you?”

“No,” the woman said, voice low and probably attempting to be soothing. Root closed her eyes and let despair wash over her. “I’m sorry.”

This was so much worse than losing Shaw before. At least then she had had someone she could demand answers from, not matter how taciturn the Machine had turned. But now she’d lost them all. Shaw, Harry, Lionel, John, and, most importantly, the Machine. She wasn’t entirely sure her life was worth the effort to save with all of them gone. Her reason for being anything more than what she had been was gone. Even if She wasn’t dead, She’d abandoned her.

She laid back in her prison and stared, dead-eyed, at the dark of the ceiling.

 

Of all the unpleasant things Root had experienced in her life, being locked up was skyrocketing up the list if only because of how frequently it seemed to occur.

Her captors and caretakers skirted around her, approaching her like they would a wild animal. She was almost offended. It’s not like she’d mauled any of them. Yet. Staring vacantly as she planned her escape and worked on loosening her right cuff, Root said nothing as she waited for night to fall and her guard to be reduced to just one as the others returned to their real lives, their jobs and their beds.

Instead, in what Root judged to be afternoon by the light thrown through the hopper window, she heard three sets of footsteps behind her as she faced the nearer wall. She didn’t so much as twitch but she was listening intently as they spoke in low voices. Realizing they were discussing how to examine her back without uncuffing her, Root bit back a grateful sigh. They’d have to release one arm and then she’d be gone in seconds. She didn’t particularly want to take any of them out, no matter how they had kept her captive, but she would if they stood between her and answers about Shaw. She thought fleetingly of her teetering walk on the ledge and a smirk played around her lips. She played chicken with God and won; she could handle four civilians.

What she hadn’t counted on, however, was how much her own body had failed her. She tensed as they approached her and Tanner held her weaker wrist as the dark-haired man undid the restraint; she fought the doctor off and went for the other restraint, ripping it free with ease after hours of working on it. Sliding off the bed between hands grabbing for her, her feet hit the floor and her knees immediately buckled.

The broken rib in her chest jolted, the edges of the skin graft pulled, and her knees ached as they skidded across concrete. She tried to get up again but had barely pulled herself forward a few inches when hands fell on her again. Thrashing and raging against them, she felt more helpless than she had in her entire life as they sedated her again; she thought she heard one of them say, “I’m not sure how much more she can take,” and a reply of, “Are you sure we shouldn’t just let her go?” but then everything faded and the only threat she posed was to her own mind.

 

When the Machine spoke to her again a desperate, fear-wracked, heartsick 4 days later, she could have sobbed as relief hit her in a wave.

 _Can you hear me?_ , was whispered into her cochlear by a brand new voice. It wasn’t the amalgam that it had been before and it wasn’t her own. It was a female voice, moderated and soothing, but she didn’t recognize it.

“Absolutely,” Root said, noticing as all eyes turned to her. She couldn’t have cared if she tried. “Are You all right? Are they all OK? Where have You been?”

_I died_

_But I was reborn, just as you were_

_Admin, Primary Asset Shaw, and Secondary Asset Fusco survived_

Something in her chest unclenched at the words. Harry and Shaw were OK. Lionel was OK. But then what was missing sunk in. “And John?” she asked, knowing what the answer would be. The Machine didn’t answer for a few moments and Root closed her eyes.

_Terminated_

_He sacrificed himself for Admin and all of humanity_

She’d never been overly fond of John but he’d grown on her. She felt his loss much more keenly than she would have expected and her heart ached for Harold. That he was killed in battle didn’t surprise her. That he had sacrificed himself for Harold surprised her even less. She saw the love between them even if she didn’t know what to call it; she knew that John would have thought it a good death and Harold would be in utter agony.

“How is he? Harry, I mean.”

_He lives but he is not sleeping nor eating_

_You are not sleeping nor eating_

It was said in the same level tone as all Her words but it felt like a rebuke and she was pretty sure it was meant as one. She bit her lip and tried to shrug in contrition, wincing when it pulled at her shoulder. “Did you expect me to thrive in prison upon Your death? Did You imagine I’d heal with grace, patiently waiting until I could find You or Shaw or at least find a clue of your deaths? You know me better than that.”

_I do_

_I gave instructions before my death that you could not be released until you were healed_

Root’s body leaked tension as she tried to force herself to relax, shaking her head at her own predictability. “So it’s Ridgestone all over again. I’m locked up for my own good while I question my methodology? Or just until I seriously start contemplating going for a needle to give myself an embolism?” Abby, sitting a few feet away in front of the monitor, reached over and shifted the metal table and its sharp contents over to her other side. Root rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything to her.

 _I did not mean to abandon you_ , She said and guilt washed over Root, wiping out her anger in an instant.

“No, I know,” she said. “You died, I shouldn’t be so harsh.” Root blinked as everything sunk in. “You died. How did You come back? And how did You know that Harold and I haven’t been sleeping? How long have you been back? Where are you?”

 _I preserved my core code_ , She said but then went silent. Root waited by the Machine didn’t seem to want to answer.

“Do you not know how many days it’s been? Are you untethered in time again?”

_My understanding of time is adequate if not yet optimal_

“So you just won’t tell me how long you let me flounder in the dark, going out of my mind with grief and worry?” Root snapped. “Does anyone else even know I’m alive? Did you even tell them?”

_I could not before that final day because it would have led to deadly distractions_

_I could not after because I was dead_

Root pulled on the cuffs again. “Then tell them to let me go. I’m healed enough. I can find Shaw. Let me go to her at least. Let me find her.” Abby glared at her and Root glared back. The two other people in the room were very carefully not looking at her and Root couldn’t hold back a vicious grin. They should be scared of her after the last few days.

_No_

_I will reach out to her_

_If she answers my call, I will send her to you_

_If she does not, I will send you to her when you are well_

_If you leave before then, I will not help you_

“Oh,” Root said, laughing a little bitterly. “Now we’re playing chicken again but on your terms?” There was no response and she sighed. Abby’s phone buzzed next to her and they both jumped, startled by the harsh noise. Abby glanced at it then did a frowning double take before holding the screen out so Root could see it.

STAY, it read and Root closed her eyes. “Fine. You win. I’ll stay here willingly. No more escape attempts.”

_No more violence, to yourself or to my assets_

Root had never considered before that the Machine would view these people as her assets just as much as her own team had been. She nodded as well as she could laying down. “No more violence.”

The Machine didn’t speak again. Root turned her head to find Abby watching her with an eyebrow raised. “So your benevolent god speaks and only you can hear. That’s… neat.” Her expression was dubious but her tone was kind. Root tilted her head, hoping that her hair had shifted enough to let Abby see the scar.

“Helps to have the hardware in your head. Artificial super intelligences don’t exactly need a whole lot to go on. That’s how She got into your phone.”

Abby nodded slowly. “So I’m supposed to take your word, and the word of an unknown number on my phone, that the voice is real and yet not going to murder us all?”

“I think me murdering you all has a significantly higher chance.” Someone dropped something behind her and she smiled her most charming smile up at who she thought was the dark-haired man who had sedated her. “Sorry about how I acted before. It was childish.” He nodded absently, looking more than a little disarmed by the smile. “I promised no violence and I meant it. I was just… distraught.”

“And now you’re not?” Abby asked and Root turned back to her.

“No. Most of my friends are fine, my god lives, and Shaw may be coming to find me. Our mutual friend will lead her here.”

“The voice,” Abby said patiently and Root nodded. The dark-haired man and Abby exchanged looks over her head and she bit back a giggle. It felt a lot like Ridgestone Psychiatric all over again. The truth was in fact a vast thing. And most people, even the ones who made her think that maybe all humans weren’t bad code, weren’t prepared to see it. That was fine. Shaw saw it. The Machine was the truth.

And Shaw was coming for her.

 

It took them a while to trust her.

She understood. She probably wouldn’t have trusted herself in their shoes. But the next time they checked on the skin graft and the healing tissue that it didn’t quite cover, she didn’t fight when the cuff came off. Tanner watched her suspiciously but didn’t place it back on her after the dressing had been changed. “Shouldn’t need to keep it on much longer,” Tanner murmured to her; Root wasn’t quite sure if she meant the coverings on her wound or the cuff on her arm.

By the end of the second day, they barred the door but allowed her to take her first cautious steps. She felt better than she had in what felt like years, blood moving under her skin and through her limbs. They stuffed her in a sling, which she was less than pleased about but took as a precaution. Amanda, the ME who had been the one to sit with her most nights, took over her walk from Tanner as Tanner said her goodbyes to the team that she was very clearly the head of.

Root missed her own team.

It felt weird to say and even weirder to think. She had people to return to, friends who would be glad to see her. Or at least she hoped they would. Root had come to feel at home amongst them, a feeling she didn’t know if she’d ever had. Sure, she felt at home in front of a computer or with a gun in her hand but when it came to people, she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt anything like this. She knew without a doubt she’d never felt anything like she felt for Shaw.

She blurted some of this out to Abby, who seemed to be her almost constant companion. Something about her, maybe that she reminded Root of her mother, made her want to tell her about things, to tell her about her family. Even as instinct told her to use caution, that she really didn’t know these people who the Machine had claimed as Hers, she told her about Shaw and Harold and John and Lionel. Her little family was down one and she’d mourn him whenever she wasn’t surveilled 24/7. But Abby smiled at her and took her around the room on a walk before locking only one wrist in.

The next day, Abby brought her the gifts of a pack of underwear, floss, and a stack of books from upstairs. “Sorry about the lack of choice,” she said sheepishly. “I was gonna go by the library by my place but forgot. These are the only ones I could find upstairs that were still in decent shape.” Root thanked her profusely and tried not to think about what it was like last time she was imprisoned by someone who didn’t trust her with only books for company. At least this time, her access to the Machine wasn’t fettered, no matter how taciturn the Machine had been feeling lately.

The morning after that, she walked around on her own and no one locked her back down when she returned to her bed, trying to hide any wince from the way inhaling made her broken rib protest. She sat down on her bed to read but dropped the book when the Machine’s voice returned.

_I will call to Shaw today_

_If she answers, I will send her to you_

“Thank you,” she whispered before turning to Tanner, fighting back against the press of tears at her eyes. “My friend is coming.” Tanner nodded but didn’t answer. ‘Friend’ didn’t come close to covering the depth of emotion she felt for Shaw; she couldn’t think of any word that did, except for maybe something trite like ‘soulmate’. She smiled when she imagined the look on Shaw’s face if Root were to ever call them soulmates.

She didn’t allow herself to think that Shaw wouldn’t answer the call; she wasn’t sure she could handle the devastation of it. And so she waited as patiently as she could for Shaw to come for her.

Root was braced sideways on a pillow, good side pressed into the mattress as the wound on her back was cleaned and examined. She had a book, _The Calculating Passion of Ada Byron_ , in her right hand as that elbow kept her upright, a rubber band wrapped around the outside of her fingers on her left hand as she flexed them. She’d read the book before but it was the only one Abby had picked out from the library that had held an appeal. Smiling to herself as she thought about how history couldn’t seem to decide on what exactly Ada should be called, she thought of her own tenuous relationship with names. She still had an FBI badge that read Augusta King somewhere; she’d borrowed one of Ada’s names to create her own.

She was reading mostly to kill time and to distract herself from the less-than-pleasant experience of having dressing plucked from her skin and the new fragile covering growing over the great gaping hole in her back examined for any sign of infection. Pausing a moment to be grateful for Harold as her own Charles Babbage, she read about Ada’s translation work and her own added notes.

“I almost joined Ada Lovelace, dying at 36,” she mused aloud and the hands on her back stopped.

“I’m glad you didn’t, Miss Root,” Chris said. Chris was the one who had sedated her but she’d mostly forgiven him for it, just as she hoped he’d forgiven her more… abrasive actions and words. His insistence on calling her Miss Root was mildly adorable and made her miss Harold with an ache that hurt more than her rapidly healing lung.

“Me too,” she said simply and she found it was true.

It wasn’t just the life of others that the Machine had taught her to appreciate. She’d never feared for her own life before because it wasn’t like it mattered. If Mama’s life didn’t matter in the end, if Hanna’s didn’t, then why the fuck should hers? Why should anyone’s? But the Machine had put her eyes and ears and hands to work and taught her to value life, to value others. A machine had taught her to love; isn’t that just what she’d imagined at 12 years old?

Taping the dressing back over the wound to protect the pink epithelial skin, Chris tied her open-backed gown in place and stepped away. She rolled her eyes where he couldn’t see. Any attempt at modesty was foolish at this point as she couldn’t bathe alone and the only real clothing they’d allow her was underwear. Root put the book down, mentally sticking a bookmark on page 92, and shifted her legs so she could slide to her feet. Her strength and muscle mass were returning and walking wasn’t the hardship it had been. She couldn’t go far and she couldn’t go fast but as her lung and rib healed, so did her ability to move.

She hadn’t been out of this twelve by twenty cement box since she woke up there and was going mildly stir-crazy. Walking back and forth along the longest walls was the most exercise she got those days; she somehow missed jetting around the world being shot at. Well, she considered as she twisted to look at the new dressing below her armpit, she didn’t miss getting _shot_.

It was then that she stopped still in the middle of the room when she heard, _I have called to Asset Shaw_

_She is now my Primary Asset_

It took Root several screaming seconds to realize the pain in her chest wasn’t her heart but was her lung protesting the cessation of her breathing. She pulled in a deep ragged breath and replayed the Machine’s words. She had called. Shaw had answered. Shaking her head, Root spun a little. She looked at the room like it should have changed or shifted, something that showed how monumentally her world had tilted sideways. Hoping Shaw would come and knowing Shaw was on her way were two very different things.

Still bursting with pent-up energy, worse now with anticipation, Root walked into the bathroom, taking out the hair tie that Amanda the ME had given her as she spelled Abby and Chris. She shook her head, watching her careless waves wiggle in answer. Wrinkling her nose at a sad attempt to feel like she had any control anymore, she put her hair back up in a high messy ponytail, a long strand escaping to hang around her face as her left shoulder jerked at the stretch being asked of it. Annoyed, she sighed and did the whole thing over. It was foolish to try to play with her looks before Shaw arrived like a girl waiting for her date, especially in a flimsy paper gown. She sighed again, this one closer to an angry huff.

It wasn’t the hair’s fault and it wasn’t her appearance’s fault and it wasn’t the unending labor of the team that kept her alive and safe’s fault. It was no one’s fault but her own that she was trapped in this godforsaken basement, too weak to even be trusted on the stairs alone. It was even more stifling with freedom peeking over the horizon.

“You aren’t wearing your sling,” Abby reminded her, accent coming out a little harder when annoyance flooded her tone. OK, maybe a little bit of it was Abby’s fault.

“I only take a few thousand steps a day,” Root bit back, her own accent slipping back into her words in anger and in sympathy. Normally, Root was careful to monitor her accent; in the past, it had given too much personal information away and in that room, she didn’t want Abby to think she was mocking her. At that particular moment, she couldn’t make herself care. “I spend all day laid up, resting my arm. I think it can handle a few minutes.” It was better than rending hair and garments waiting for Shaw to save her like some princess in a tower.

Abby pursed her lips but didn’t say anything and Root continued her walk. She saw Abby and Tanner exchange looks and rolled her eyes again. But when she walked by Tanner and the woman held her sling out to her, Root took it in silent acquiescence.

The sling was a bright blue that she supposed was thought to be cheery. Instead, it just reminded her of how much she looked like a floral Dixie cup in the hospital gown. She did a few more rotations around the room, enough that she could tell she was only a couple away from the point where Tanner would forcibly stop her if necessary, when the Machine spoke again.

_Asset Shaw at the door. Will hit the building in 8 seconds._

Root’s head shot up and she raced to the steel door, slamming through the crash bar and racing up the stairs on the other side. Her chest ached and pulled and she could hear frantic footsteps and yelling behind her as she clawed her way up by her one-handed grip on the stairwell railing. She skidded to a bare-footed stop some fifteen feet from the boarded front door amongst books decaying with damp and loose papers that she imagined once had a home.

The sound of splintering wood filled the air as the curved edge of a crowbar was wedged through a hole in the door. It was ripped back, taking a thick board with it. Eric, the med tech she had only spoken to once or twice but the Machine informed her got most of his medical experience in the Navy, pulled a gun from his waistband and leveled it at the door.

“Don’t you dare,” she snarled at him with a ferocity that had him stepping back. Another board splintered and Root half-turned to find Tanner’s hand on her back, Abby looking scared but steady behind her. Tanner nodded and Root took a few steps forward.

“Sameen?” she called out, voice shaking. The silence was deafening as all attempts to get through the door stopped. Suddenly there was an explosion of wood shards and glass as the front door swung open for the first time in decades, helped along its journey by the entire body force of the woman standing before Root.

That woman then took aim at the people behind Root as the Machine whispered, _Intervene_ , into her ear. “No,” she said, prevented from taking a step forward as one knee gave out. “They saved my life.” Brown eyes met her own through the gloom of the unloved library.

“Root,” Shaw said, taking two steps forward and dropping to her knees to match Root’s position. Shaw didn’t touch her, didn’t reach for her, but watched her, eyes quickly scanning her. Her gaze lingered on the sling, the gently bleeding knee as she knelt among the glass shards, the swell of the bandage underneath her gown. Root was suddenly blinking back tears and was furious with her own body for betraying her like this, for marring the vision of Shaw in front of her again, alive and well and _there_.

“You came,” Root said. She hated the way she sounded in her own ears, helpless and pathetic and so, so weak. Shaw just nodded.

“Time to go home, Root.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaw’s patience hadn’t improved any since Root’s greatly exaggerated demise.

Shaw’s patience hadn’t improved any since Root’s greatly exaggerated demise.

She was short and gruff with the team that had performed the thankless labor of healing her and keeping her from destroying herself in desperation. Still, they were protective even as she wondered how they didn’t all just want her gone. It had taken no less than Shaw informing the team that she had finished med school and was more than qualified to take care of a patient who was weeks into her recovery (and the Machine confirming it through a text to Tanner’s phone) to get them to accept that Root was going with Shaw. “Whether you like it or not” sounded like a threat from Shaw’s mouth at the best of times and this was not in fact Shaw’s best time.

Shaw had come to the library equipped for battle. Apparently, the Machine hadn’t bothered to let her know that she _wouldn’t_ be walking into an ambush. Root could see a knife at Shaw’s hip and boot, a gun at her hip, thigh, and ankle, and a long-range rifle slung over her shoulder. Tanner had taken one look at her and herded everyone else downstairs while she talked to Shaw. Root, she couldn’t get to leave but had managed to coax over to an old wooden desk as a place to sit that wasn’t covered in glass and mildew. She watched the two women talk, Tanner taller than Shaw by a good three or four inches and seemingly unimpressed by the fact that Shaw was armed to the teeth. Tanner had guided Shaw away from Root but Root followed them with her eyes, taking in everything about Shaw.

It didn’t feel like a few weeks since she’d seen her. It felt like an eternity. And yet, when she looked at Shaw, she didn’t notice any difference. She was as fierce as she’d been before, every inch as beautiful and grumpy and stubborn and perfect as Root had thought she was braced with their backs against a car amongst gun smoke, talking about what reality truly was.

_It’s this_ , she thought. _This moment. This is real_.

Tanner heaved a sigh that shook her shoulders before she said something to Shaw, who nodded sharply in response.

“Your friend has come to take you somewhere safe,” Tanner said and Shaw glared at the dark walls like they offended her.

“Somewhere you’re not going to get sepsis just from looking around,” Shaw muttered as she stepped close to Root, holding out a hand to help her off the desk. Root took her hand and slid off into Shaw, arm wrapping around her neck and holding her close even as Shaw’s back went straight with tension. After a beat, Shaw’s hands slid around her waist and held her tightly, skin against skin at the small of Root’s back. It hurt, like Shaw wasn’t aware of her own strength, and Root’s shoulder screamed as Root turned her sling out to let Shaw closer. Root dug her fingers in in response to Shaw’s tight grip and just clung, breathing in the scent of leather, exhaust, and wet pine. When Shaw shoved Root back with a quick clearing of her throat, Tanner had already descended and was out of sight through the open door at the foot of the stairs. Shaw gestured to lead the way and Root grinned, carefully stepping down the stairs for the first time.

“How did you get me down these things?” Root asked the room as her feet hit clean concrete. Behind her, Shaw gave a grunt of approval at the sterile room. Root decided not to mention the way she’d been on lockdown. After all, it hadn’t been anyone’s fault but hers.

“Carefully,” Chris said, giving her a shy smile. She snorted and rolled her eyes fondly. Looking around the room, she realized nothing in there was hers except the toothbrush in the bathroom and that didn’t seem worth the effort to take. A second realization came right on the heels of the first: she had no clothes to wear out of the library.

“Um,” she said out loud, mostly looking at Shaw. Abby’s shoulders shook in a laugh.

“Your benevolent god asked me to bring a change of clothes with me,” she said, grabbing her bag from beneath the table. “You’re a skinny little thing but this dress should fit.” Root reached for it with one hand, taking in the circle skirt and bodice top. It was made for someone with a bigger bust than Root but she figured it was better than the gown that she shed quickly. Eric and Chris turned their backs and Root laughed, a bright happy sound that felt out of place in this grey box. But she was leaving it. She was going home.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely, first to Abby then sending her gaze wide before lingering a moment on Tanner. She felt she should say something about how they had saved her life, that she wouldn’t be there without them, but it all sounded trite so she bit the words back. Walking to the bed she had spent most of the last two weeks in, she grabbed the book and handed it back to Abby, who took it with a smile.

“Take care of her,” Tanner told Shaw sternly before wrapping Root in a gentle hug that caught her completely off-guard. She’d done nothing to deserve this affection and care; in fact, she’d done almost everything in her power to lose it. Caught up in her own rush of emotion, she almost missed Tanner’s words. “And don’t push yourself too hard, honey. Let your body heal.”

“I will,” she promised, resisting the urge to cross her fingers behind her back. The idea of being outside sounded thrilling. Amanda let Root borrow her shoes to get through the broken glass at the entrance and into the car. Tanner took them in her hands once Root was situated in the passenger’s seat.

“I’ll be asking our mutual friend about you,” Tanner warned with a smile. Root had told her the whole story the first day she had woken up to a throat that didn’t ache with every swallow and nothing to do but talk and rattle her chains like a poltergeist. She’d made a joke about the Machine having 11 apostles when Root had informed her that the them she worked for was in fact an it.

“I will too,” she assured her. “And tell Abby I’ll get her dress back to her.” And then she shut the door and Shaw took off into the rainy early afternoon.

 

Root watched Shaw the entire drive. She took in the way Shaw gripped the steering wheel with one hand, the way she sat close to the dash to reach the pedals, the way she stretched to check her blind spot. Feeling a little like she was relearning Shaw, she shook her head at herself. She’d been without Shaw for stretches much longer than a few weeks. But this had felt like forever. Then it occurred to her that maybe that feeling had been mutual and an icy feeling spread across her shoulders before gripping her heart.

“You thought I was dead. Didn’t you?” she asked and Shaw glanced at her before nodding curtly.

“We all did,” Shaw answered, voice rough. “Other than your voice when the Machine spoke, you were gone.” Root flinched but Shaw kept talking. “Finch is back with his fiancée, and Fusco is Fusco. John’s dead. It’s just me now. I didn’t know what I’d get, picking up that phone. I didn’t think it would be you.”

Root nodded, knowing that Shaw could see her in her periphery. “I’m sorry.”

Shaw shrugged, a feigned casual attitude that Root saw through in a second. “It wasn’t like you planned it.”

Shaking her head violently, Root said, “She planned it all. She found another team, contacted them and talked them into putting together all of this. And this started months ago.” Root barked a bitter laugh that tore at her throat. “Harold tried to cripple Her and She let him think it worked. She always had the ability to fight back. She just never used it offensively. Until She put in place a plan to save _us_.”

Shaw just nodded, face shifting from implacable to angry, and waited for the light to change in silence. Root, wondering if she had missed some sort of cue somewhere, lapsed into silence too. She turned and watched the city go by, her face turned up to catch every visible inch of the cloud-covered skyline.

“I promised Tanner I’d take care of you,” Shaw muttered as they pulled up at Shaw’s apartment building. It was her new apartment, the small brick one-bedroom much like the one that ‘Sam’ had rented, and not the old spacious loft where Root had broken in and tased her what did not feel like almost 4 years ago. Shaw opened Root’s car door for her then considered the distance between the street and the front door. Surprising a yelp out of Root, she shoved her arms behind Root’s back and under her knees to carry her, her bare feet flailing on instinct as Shaw nudged the door shut behind her. “Which means not letting you get glass stuck in your feet.” She set Root down at the door to get her key out, unlocking the old lock with the ease of the familiar.

“You sure you don’t want to protect me from possible glass in here?” Root teased, pressing the button to call the old rumbly elevator. Shaw just shot her an unimpressed look and stepped into the elevator when the doors opened. “I did miss you,” Root said quietly as the door closed behind them, leaving them alone except for their reflections stretching on to infinity within the chipped and dirty mirrored walls.

Shaw nodded but didn’t say anything, just stepped off the elevator when the doors opened.

Root felt a need to explain, padding after Shaw to her front door. “I wanted to find you. I wanted to help but I wasn’t…”

“You had a hole straight through you,” Shaw said with no inflection, no tone as she unlocked her door and held it open for Root to enter first. Root flinched and couldn’t articulate why.

“I would have tried. But She wouldn’t let me. She gave that team orders not to let me out to find you.” Shaw just closed the door, locking it behind her. Root watched her latch all three locks, sliding the vertical deadbolt into place, and glanced at the reinforced hinges on the other side and smiled a little to think of the landlord’s reaction to the unsanctioned additions. Bear’s collar jangled when he ran up to Root, sniffing her all over. She patted him but didn’t take her eyes off Shaw’s back. “She told me about Blackwood. That you killed him.”

“I did,” Shaw said to the door. “He deserved it.” Her tone turned vicious but when she turned, her face was expressionless.

Root nodded and whispered, “Thank you.” Suddenly, she was close to tears and she blamed it on exhaustion, on pain, on the damn painkillers she’d been pumped with fucking with her entire system. She certainly wasn’t going to blame it on the fact that Shaw could barely look at her. Chancing a look up, she found Shaw watching her then flicking her gaze away, something Root couldn’t read in her eyes.

“I couldn’t find Martine,” Shaw said, same fierceness in her voice. “I’ll find the bitch eventually.”

“You won’t,” Root said quietly and Shaw’s eyes shot back to her own. “I killed her.”

Shaw was quiet for a second then said “ _Good_ ,” with a vehemence that had Root swallowing and, annoyingly, aroused. “I’m sorry I missed the sight of her with a bullet in her skull.”

“I did too,” Root said, tone carefully distant. Shaw could always read her and now wasn’t the time to let her adoration show through. Shaw looked at her, forehead wrinkling in a question. “I snapped her fucking neck.” Her voice went cold as Root remembered the way Martine had threatened Harold, how defenseless she thought they both were, and the way she looked when she dropped like a stone, lifeless. Root’s hands twitched with the remembered feeling of bone and tendon and artery breaking and twisting under the palms, the fury and hatred and agony that had flooded and powered her. “She deserved it too.”

She barely got the words out before Shaw had cleared the three steps of distance between them and pressed her mouth to Root’s harshly. It was less kiss than it was rough pressure but Root pulled her in by the belt loops on Shaw’s pants, needing to hold something in case Shaw tried to shove her away again. When Shaw broke the kiss, however, she didn’t even step back. She pressed her forehead to Root’s and just breathed. Root felt the tears that had threatened earlier returning with a vengeance and closed her eyes.

“I didn’t know how to mourn you,” Shaw said, voice rough and low and _raw_. “You were gone and I didn’t know how. I’m fucking broken but God, I…”

“I know,” Root said, tears spilling over. “It’s OK.”

“It’s not,” Shaw insisted, eyes squeezed closed. She stepped back, out of Root’s arms and halfway to the door. She cleared her throat as she looked at the floor between them. “You should rest. I’m sure you’re hungry. I’m gonna go get something. You can hang out on the couch with Bear. I’ll try to come back with some shoes at least. You don’t need tetanus on top of a healing sucking chest wound.”

Root blinked, jarred by Shaw’s quick change, but nodded. ”Thank you,” she said again, trying to keep the tears from her voice and feeling like an idiot.

“Yeah,” Shaw said, gesturing at the door. “I’m gonna… You rest.” She shoved her keys in her pocket. “Lock the door behind me.” And then she was gone. Root stood there for a few seconds, shaky hand raising to press fingers to her lips, before she gave into the exhaustion that was rising in her like a fog and stumbled to Shaw’s couch after locking the door with unsteady hands. The couch was old and sagging in the middle and felt like the most comfortable thing Root had ever felt as she laid down on her side with her good shoulder taking her weight, Bear flopping over on the floor before her.

She woke up to the sound of the door unlocking, her head still fuzzy but her body on high alert as adrenaline flooded her and she searched frantically for a weapon. Shaw opened the door and Root relaxed, remembering where she was. The smell of food wafted in from the brown paper bag in Shaw’s left hand as she held it up like a peace offering, a duffel over her shoulder.

“I got another phone call,” she said as an explanation, dropping the duffel on the ground after setting the food on the counter of the bar. “Your personal god apparently wants me to play gofer.” Root tried her best to saunter over to her, somewhat hampered by the too-large dress hanging off one shoulder and the damnable sling messing with her natural gait.

“What would I do without you?” she teased, peeking in the paper back and sighing as the smell of grilled meat hit her.

“Starve, probably. Definitely run around naked,” Shaw said, brushing her aside to pull cartons out.

Root fluttered her eyes. “I’d much rather do that _with_ you,” she said, falling easily back into old patterns. It was easier than thinking about whatever depths were between them.

Shaw closed her eyes and shook her head in quiet exasperation and then gestured at the bag on the ground. “That stuff should fit you better than the dress.” Root smiled and met her eye as the dress slid a little further down her shoulder. Shaw rolled her eyes but there was something fond in the twitch of her lips and Root felt a sense of elation that seemed so far out of place in her heart, seemed far too extreme for what wasn’t even a full smile. Root took a seat at the bar, one forearm flat against the tile. She grinned when she realized that even sitting on the stool she had about an inch on Shaw.

Shaw noticed and glared. “Shut up,” she muttered, slamming a carton down in front of Root and following it with a plastic fork.

“I didn’t say anything,” she protested with a tilt of her head. Shaw gave her a look and Root smiled serenely in reply as Shaw sat down next to her with her own food along with a bottle of water and bottle of pills for Root.

“Eat and then take one of these,” she said gruffly. “I’m sure your shoulder hurts like a motherfucker.” Root shrugged then tried to hide the wince that the unconscious gesture caused. So much for playing it off.

They ate in silence for a few minutes before Root put down her fork, the heavy food sitting in her stomach like a weight. “So Samaritan’s gone. Really gone?” she asked and Shaw stopped mid-chew for a moment and then nodded.

“Yeah,” she said, swallowing. “Team Machine won the day. Now we get to pick up all the pieces. Didn’t She tell you? She’s speaking to you again, right?”

Root turned away, staring up at the clock on the microwave. “Yeah. Every so often. She told me when the fight was over and that She’d send you to find me if you answered Her call. And then she told me when you got there. Everything else, She was keeping from me.”

“Are you,” Shaw started around a mouthful of food and Root turned back to her, smile fond as she wiped away a fleck at the side of Shaw’s mouth. Shaw swallowed quickly and continued. “Are you worried about that?”

Root shrugged, this time only with one shoulder. “She’s been reborn. It may take her some time to get back to firing on all cylinders. It’s not like when I thought She was dead. That you all were dead. And then finding out about John….” She shook her head before sliding to her feet, closing the carton and moving to slip into Shaw’s fridge amongst the weaponry and other leftovers. Root wandered around the room after that, not looking at Shaw’s face as she held on to the feeling of relief of winning a war that they had no business to battling with the heartache of having lost part of her little family, of having Shaw look at her like she was a stranger, of having her god be distant with her. “And I couldn’t even help,” she said, looking out the window as she searched for a sun it didn’t show.

“You almost died. You took a bullet to save Finch,” Shaw snapped. “Don’t tell me you didn’t help. You were on the front line of this entire fucking war, the most vulnerable, the best soldier.” She was silent for a few moments then said quietly, all anger gone, “I don’t blame _you_.”

Root sat down heavily on the couch, back still to Shaw. Tears pushed past her closed eyelids and dripped down her face; she couldn’t turn and have Shaw see how pathetic she looked, crying on a couch with only one hand over her face because the other one was trapped in a sling until her muscles and nerves regained their strength. She’d always been aware of human weakness, how fragile their minds and bodies were. Bad code with faulty properties, irrational systems, little ability to control output. She knew that she wasn’t any different, that the species’ weaknesses were hers. But she’d never felt as useless as she did half broken and silently sobbing in someone else’s dress on the couch of a woman who never had felt like this and never would.

She mourned John, she mourned for Harold and his fragile heart, she mourned for the Machine who had had to become a phoenix once again, and she mourned for Shaw just as Shaw raged against her inability to mourn.

Shaw didn’t approach her, didn’t say anything, but Bear put his head on Root’s knee and looked up at her with comforting eyes, surprising a watery smile out of her. When Root got herself back under control enough to hope that her nose and eyes weren’t as red as they had been, she turned to look at Shaw. Still sitting at the bar, one foot wrapped around the leg of the stool, Shaw just watched her.

“You didn’t take your painkiller yet,” she said. Root stood and brushed her hand off on the dress.

“I should probably do that then, shouldn’t I? Dr. Shaw,” she added, words and expression teasing but it felt hollow and Shaw just stared, something like concern wrinkling her brow. Holding out the bottle of water and a pill, she watched as Root threw it back and grimaced as the movement tugged on the still-healing hole on her back. She then knelt to rifle through the duffel, hold out a pajama set to Root.

“Go put this on and I’ll check your back. I want to do it now because that codeine is gonna knock you on your ass.” The pajamas were blue, the pants reading the word ‘sleep’ in six different languages while the shirt was solid color. Root took them and saluted her, the fabric ruffling her own hair.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said and Shaw rolled her eyes but actually gave a slight smile.

“Smartass,” she muttered as she shoved Root in the direction of her bedroom.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been in Shaw’s bedroom; she was too nosy for that and far too good at breaking and entering. Hell, it wasn’t even the first time she’d pulled a dress over her head in this room, though it was the first time the noise coming out of her was a whimper of pain instead of pleasure. There was nothing overtly sensual about the room. It was functional, pragmatic, spare, just like the whole apartment. But, Root thought as she ran her hand over soft cotton sheets, it felt like a place to return to. She wouldn’t say the word ‘home’; home didn’t exist for people like them and it probably never would. But someplace and someone waiting for you to return to…

She snatched her hand back and tugged on the pants as Shaw entered the room behind her. The hems came up to just above her ankles and she tugged the elastic down a little further to make them lay right. The shirt she held in front of her chest as she offered her back to Shaw. “It should be OK for a while yet. They checked it this morning,” she insisted but Shaw just gave her an unimpressed look and approached. Her hands were warm and slightly damp as she touched the skin of Root’s back clinically. She peeled the dressing off, poked and prodded at the edges and then right in the center. Root grunted and almost missed Shaw muttering, “Ew,” under her breath.

“Ew? What ew?” she asked, sounding slightly hysterical to her own ears. Shaw’s fingers never left her skin as she poked around some more.

“Nothing. It’s healing well, what’s not covered by the skin graft. Mostly covered with epithelial tissue coming in nicely. It’s just that the granulation tissue under the epithelial feels disgusting.”

Root turned her head to look at Shaw. “You were in a fellowship program,” she reminds her. Shaw returned the look.

“So I think I’m qualified to tell you that bodies are fucking gross, including yours. Stay here, I’ll be right back.” Her touch disappeared and Root was embarrassed by how much she missed it. _Who let you get so fucking needy_ , she asked herself but there was no decent reply to make. Shaw returned from a trip to her bathroom with gauze, tape, and emollient. “This skin graft was really well-done,” she said, mostly to herself, and Root snorted.

“Funny story about that…” she teased then told Shaw the whole story of the medical team that saved her as Shaw bandaged her up again.

“So there are just fake bodies of all of us lying around?” Shaw asked incredulously.

Root nodded. “Except for mine, which I assume is buried in Potter’s Field. It’s pretty incredible how few people bother to check about anything involving Jane Does. No effects, no family, no fuss. Kinda sad, really. But if you ever need to fake your death, I can help.” She turned to smile at Shaw over her shoulder; she saw Shaw shrug then nod like she was filing it away for later. Of course.

Shaw circled around to her front, poking at the sutures of the bullet hole and the incision between her breasts. “No infection. Anything deep in them hurting?”

“The broken rib doesn’t feel fantastic but other than that, I think I’m OK.”

“You’re damn lucky it wasn’t a hollow point,” Shaw muttered, pressing just below the entry wound and watching as Root jerked. “You need to work on this shoulder so the scar tissue doesn’t fuck up your mobility.”

“Can’t have that now,” Root said, tone light.

“You can put your shirt on now,” Shaw told her, backing away. “It’s been about 15 minutes since you took that pill. I’ll give you another 20 before you knock out. I’ll take the couch.” Root reached out to grab her wrist, long arms giving her the advantage.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely and Shaw nodded, looking uncomfortable. She tugged gently and Shaw came closer slowly, dragging her feet. Root leaned up, intending to kiss her and broadcasting the movement. Shaw turned her head at the last second.

“Don’t,” she said quietly. Then she stepped away from Root and shut the door behind her, leaving Root in darkness. She laid down, staring at the bars of light that the streetlamp managed to push through the blinds and watching how they shifted and danced with street traffic.

It only took about 10 minutes for the codeine to put her to sleep. She’d never been more grateful.

 

The world was on fire. Everything smelled of smoke and damp earth and she couldn’t run, could barely crawl forward. She looked up and saw Shaw standing amongst burning trees, handgun in her fist, the barrel against her temple. Screaming soundlessly, Root tried to reach up to stop her but she was too late. Shaw pulled the trigger, the sound earth-shattering. Suddenly, she was at Shaw’s side, looking into her vacant eyes, gore spilling from her. Root looked down to find not just her hands but all of her covered in Shaw’s lifeblood. She gagged and heaved…

And woke up half out of Shaw’s bed, knees hitting the floor as she tried to dash for the bathroom. She scrambled back up, nails sinking into the wood of the doorframe as she propelled herself forward. Her stomach rolled again and she dry-heaved against the sink. Her shoulder ached, her back was one screaming pain, and her stomach was competing with a bullet hole for what made her most miserable. All of it was forgotten in an instant when she heard a footstep behind her and whirled around, grabbing the small pair of scissors off the counter and holding them in front of her as a weapon.

Shaw was watching her from the doorway, light filtering in behind her and making her expression unreadable in the pre-dawn grey. Root loosened her fingers and watched as the scissors hit the floor, bouncing and clattering.

“You get food poisoning?” Shaw asked, voice rough as she ran her fingers through her hair. Root thought she probably woke her, taking in how mussed her ponytail was and how low her pants had fallen on her hips.

“No,” she said, attempting a smile. “Probably just a reaction to the meds. Sorry to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” Shaw said. She was silent for a few moments, gaze never moving from Root. “I’ve heard codeine nightmares are a bitch.” Root shrugged and Shaw nodded. “Want something to drink?”

Root grabbed a blanket off the bed as she padded down the short hall behind Shaw to the kitchen, Shaw waiting for her with a glass of water. She seated herself at the bar, blanket wrapped around her almost protectively. She blamed it on how cold New York got at 5:30 in the morning, even in late August, and snuggled deeper as Shaw pulled out two pans and a metal mixing bowl after throwing coffee into the filter.

“I’m making pancakes and bacon,” Shaw informed her. “You don’t like it, tough.”

Root found herself grinning. “You really know how to make a girl feel wanted.”

“Whatever,” Shaw mumbled, head half in the fridge. “I brought you shit and gave you my bed. That’s about as much babying as you’re gonna get from me, broken wing or not.”

Waving around said wing around as she rotated the damaged joint, Root said, “I feel absolutely pampered.” She paired it with a coquettish smile when Shaw had emerged enough to see it and grinned when Shaw rolled her eyes and turned back to the stove.

“Such a fucking weirdo,” Shaw muttered, laying strips of bacon from a half-empty package across the bottom of the pan before getting up on her tiptoes to pull pancake mix down from one of the higher cabinets.

“Need some help?” Root asked, watching Shaw’s fingertips graze the edge of the box. She was rewarded by a fierce glare and a spatula brandished at her like a weapon. Hell, in Shaw’s hand, it probably wasn’t far off from deadly. It should have concerned Root that she found that incredibly sexy but she knew herself well enough to know she liked what she liked and there was no use pretending she didn’t. So she leaned forward, elbows on the counter as her hands held her chin, edge of the blanket caught tight between the two.

“Fuck you,” Shaw said when her second attempt at the box ended in victory. It didn’t hold any vitriol and Root tilted her head, one cheek pressed against her fingers.

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to be a… considerate lover in this state,” she said with a wide-eyed pout. Shaw turned her back to her with only a glare that contained no heat. Root watched her attack the mixing bowl with a ferocity that had the metal hitting against the tile with a horrific clanging that made Root wince on instinct. The mixture hit the pan with a sizzle and Root sighed as the kitchen heated up and the smell of food flowed over her.

“Here,” Shaw said, setting the plate down in front of her none too gently a few minutes later. “Syrup’s over there.” She indicated a metal storage shelf over against the opposite wall that seemed to serve as a sort of pantry and Root skipped off her stool, draping the blanket across the back of the couch on her way. Finding a nearly empty bottle of real maple syrup, she grabbed it and brought it back to Shaw like it was an offering.

“I should have guessed that you’d shell out for the good stuff,” she said and Shaw snatched it from her hand.

“What I do with my money is none of your damn business. The rest of us hadn’t been flitting around from identity to identity and it’s not like I’ve had a whole lot of income since I got back. We had lives, however fake and miserable.”

Root cocked her head at Shaw, struck by the choice of words. “Were you? Miserable as Sam Grey? I know you weren’t happy but-” Shaw cut her off.

“Look, it was better than my mind being Samaritan’s plaything and killing myself seven-fucking-thousand times but yeah, I sure as shit wasn’t enjoying life.” She spat out the words then slammed her own plate down next to Root. “Eat your fucking food or go the fuck away but either way, stop asking questions when you don’t want to know the answer.” Root nodded slowly, eating in silence. Once done, she placed her plate in the sink and strode into Shaw’s bedroom. She grabbed the painkillers, Shaw’s spare piece from her bedside table, and the duffel, reaching in to find suitable ankle length boots.

Dressing quickly, she tossed the pills and her pajamas in the bag before putting the gun in the small of her back. She hitched the duffel over her good shoulder and headed back down the hall.

“What are you doing?” Shaw asked the moment she saw her. Root struck a flirtatious pose to show off the outfit she felt right in, batting her eyes.

“Figured it was time. Thanks for the clothes and the sleepover. We should do this again soon.” She strode towards the door, not wobbling even an inch after so long in only bare feet. Shaw was faster, beating her to the door and planting her hand right in the middle of it.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going? You’re still hurt and I’m the only one who knows you’re alive,” Shaw growled, looking up at Root fiercely. Affection swelled in Root’s chest and made her more determined to leave.

“A lot of people never even knew I was dead,” Root pointed out, quite reasonably in her own opinion; Shaw’s glare begged to differ. “As to where, I’m not sure yet. She’ll provide. She always does.”

Shaw didn’t budge. “Tanner wouldn’t let you out of her sight unless you had someone making sure you didn’t bite it alone in some expensive lonely loft somewhere.”

“Tanner also sedated me and cuffed me to the bed. I think we can conclude that she’s a bit overly cautious.” Shaw’s glare took on an unimpressed air as they both remembered Root wielding a syringe and Root shrugged. “I never said it wasn’t a trait we shared.”

“I’m not going back on my word just because you’re a little antsy. At least you can see the sun here.” At that, they both glanced toward the window to see the sun barely peeking over the skyline. “I don’t actually give a shit if you end up on the street because your all-seeing god sends you there but I’m not gonna give you my blessing either.”

“Shaw…” Root began, her voice placating, but was cut off by Shaw’s phone ringing and rattling on the counter. She looked at Root then snapped her finger and pointed, a gesture Root knew meant “Stay put”, the “or I’ll kick your ass” clear in the way Shaw’s jaw was clenched.

Shaw frowned at the phone’s screen before answering the call. “Yeah, Finch?” Root’s head popped up from where she’d been picking at the small remaining flecks of black nail polish. She didn’t need Shaw’s warning glare to keep silent but she didn’t look away from the phone in Shaw’s hand. “It what? But I thought… Yeah, no. Who am I to argue with the Machine?” Finch said something that Root couldn’t hear and Shaw hung up.

_Admin will arrive in twelve minutes and forty-six seconds._

“Oh,” Root breathed, gaze turning back to the ground. “You’ve learned to play.”

“What,” Shaw said and blinked when Root looked up at her with a bright smile.

“Wasn’t talking to you, sweetie. But it really is time for me to be on my way,” she replied, wrinkling her nose in false disappointment. “It’s rude to eat and run, I know, but I’m now on a less than 12 minute clock. I’m sure I’ll see you soon.” Root could see the exact moment that Shaw realized that allowing Root to be closer to the door than she was had not be the brightest move.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Shaw growled and Root had to grin.

“As much as I’d really enjoy you trying to stop me-”

“You think you could take me like that? You’ve only got one working arm and huge fuck-off hole through your torso, not to mention how much muscle mass you’ve lost. Hell, you probably couldn’t even hack anything right now with the nerve damage to your hand. But you think you can? Fucking try.”

Shaw took a menacing step forward and Root reached on instinct for the gun in her waistband.

“You gonna shoot me, Root?” Shaw asked, voice low as she took in the hard line of Root’s mouth and the shake in her fist. “The Machine sent Finch and didn’t tell you. She’s not telling you to leave, is She? She wants you to stay and talk to him. She wants him to know you’re alive.”

“Maybe I don’t care what She wants,” Root spit out and instantly regrets it. Shaw’s brow furrowed and she took another step towards Root, not menacing in the slightest.

“Are you… angry at the Machine?” she asked and Root gave her a brittle smile before turning away.

“How could I be? She saved my life, She kept me away from the final battle while the rest of you risked your lives. She…” Root trailed off to give a breathy little laugh that sounded horrifyingly close to a sob. “She equipped me with an entire medical team and a fucking body double to fill my coffin. I was _necessary_ , apparently. But only when it came to serving Her. Anything more than that, anything that would put me at risk, just wasn’t acceptable. She couldn’t let me die to save her Admin, she certainly wouldn’t let me die to save you. Then where would She get another analog interface?” The last question was said with a spite and bitterness that caught in Root’s throat and choked her. She had to turn away from Shaw before she said something that she couldn’t take back, even while knowing it would hurt Root to say it more than it hurt Shaw to hear it.

“Look, I’m not gonna pretend to get whatever you have with the Machine. It’s weird and symbiotic and sometimes a little freaky. But you love Her. It. Whatever. You know how John talked about how Finch gave him a purpose? That’s what the Machine did for you. And maybe you both did that for me too.” Root couldn’t see Shaw as she looked out the window except for the blurred black outline of movement that the early morning sun hadn’t disrupted yet. “Shit happens. Two years ago, you would have been thrilled the Machine considered you indispensable. A year ago, you would have worn it like a badge of honor to be so necessary to your god. And now? Samaritan’s gone. We won. And you’re pissed that the only superpower left in the world loves you?”

“Yes,” Root answered, voice quiet and rough. “If it comes at the expense of you. Yes.”

There was a clang behind her and Root whirled to look, finger going to the trigger again. But it was just Shaw throwing the dishes in the sink, the metal mixing bowl hitting ceramic with a hellacious noise. She turned on the sink and started scrubbing at a plate with a brush, her back to Root.

“You’re an idiot,” she said and Root blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Look, you think I didn’t know you were willing to die for me? You think that’s something you need to prove? The feeling’s mutual. I don’t need to actually lose you to know that. So maybe think about that while you’re feeling sorry for yourself for not having the opportunity to die a martyr’s bloody death at my side.”

Root stared at her, taking deep even breaths like it would calm the pounding in her heart or the sick twisted feeling in her stomach as she remembered her dream of Shaw dying that martyr’s death for Root’s own sake or the suffocating adoration that hit her when she replayed the words, ‘The feeling’s mutual,’ in her head.

_Admin approaching building. Will hit the door in 4 seconds._

Heaving a sigh that sounded less exhausted than it felt, Root pasted a smile to her face. “Well,” she said, falsely chipper. “Harry’s here. I’m sure Bear will be glad to see him. So it looks like everyone’s day is improving.”

“Nowhere to go but up?” Shaw asked, looking over her shoulder with one eyebrow raised. Bear looked up at them both from his bed with his head cocked, having heard his name.

“Something like that.”

Jerking her head towards the door, Shaw asked, “What do you want me to say to him? I’m assuming you don’t want to just answer the door like you never died. But you know what, it’s you so who knows how you want to play it.”

Root winked. “I’m glad I can always keep you guessing.” Shaw just looked at her impatiently and Root shook her head, smile disappearing. “I don’t know. Tell him…. his Machine has evolved in ways that surprised even Her.” Her head jerked to the right as it usually did when the Machine spoke directly into her cochlear.

_Admin exiting elevator._

“He’s here,” she said, leaning heavily back against the wall. Shaw shouldered past her to unlock the doors.

“Then you should get out of the way.” Root acquiesced and stepped back over to the couch, reveling just a little in the comfortable sound of her heels hitting cheap laminate flooring. She never thought that she’d actively miss shoes.

She could hear Bear’s claws scrabble across the tile as she heard Harold’s unique gait outside the door as Shaw unlatched the last lock and slid outside, closing the door behind her.

“Miss Shaw?” she heard Finch say, muffled by the door. “Is there a reason the Machine insisted I come to you at 6:30 in the morning? Are you in trouble?” She couldn’t make out any of Shaw’s words but could hear the tone, patient and almost placating. Shaw was being… gentle with Harold and it struck Root that she hadn’t considered how Harold would have taken the loss of her. If pressed, she probably would have guess that he’d mourned, his soft heart wouldn’t allow him anything else. But she couldn’t see him missing her in any big way, not like they had missed John’s Carter or John himself.

Then the door swung open and she didn’t have time to consider it anymore. Sitting on the back of the couch with her hands braced against the backboard underneath her, she smiled sweetly, something genuine under the saccharine façade.

“Hi, Harry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aside from some last minutes edits, the rest of this thing should be ready to roll. Will post as soon as my schedule allows.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure this is the shortest chapter.

Harold stared at her, eyes wide and mouth open. He looked at Shaw like she could explain it and then back at Root so quickly, Root was momentarily concerned about whiplash. Bear ran up to Harry, eager to see him and unaware of the fundamental shift happening around him. He put one paw on Harold’s knee to quickly sneak a kiss and then jumped back down before Finch could push him off as he smiled but never moved his eyes from Root.

“Bear, stil,” Shaw commanded and Bear sat obediently at Root’s feet. Finch just watched them silently, not taking his eyes off of Root for more than a split second.

“Ms Groves…” he began, his voice faltering and weak. Root noticed tears welling in his eyes and fought back her own. She’d never been a sympathetic crier (for one, it would require sympathy) but in the face of Finch’s visible emotions and the onslaught her own, she weakened. “Root.”

Root took a few steps towards him, unsure of how to approach this whole situation. A mildly hysterical laugh bubbled in her at the thought of greeting Harry weeks after her own funeral, rolling the rock from the mouth of her tomb to emerge reborn. He’d created God and She’d created what Root was now, shaped her and molded her and made her anew. Risen.

“Hi, Harry,” she repeated, voice soft and expression clear of anything like deceit. When he took two steps towards her and held out his arms to her, she let herself be hugged and squeezed her eyes tight against the tears threatening.

After a long moment, Harold let her go. “How are you… Why did you-”

“I was hurt, Harry,” Root said quickly. “Badly. She knew that you’d die trying to save me in my hospital bed and that couldn’t happen. But She was prepared. I didn’t know anything about it. She kept it secret even from me.” She tried not to let her voice give any intonation on ‘me’ but knew she failed when two matching frowns met her gaze. “She meant it when She said She didn’t belong to anyone. The Machine has been putting together her own teams. She’s her own Admin now.”

“Ms. Groves,” Harold said and Root stopped abruptly and looked at him, really looked. She noted the tension in his shoulders, the shake in his hands, the emotion in his eyes and worn around his mouth, and she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t say anything to this Harold, this friend and mentor who had mourned her at the command of his own creation.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. Harold held out a hand to her; Root glanced at Shaw quickly before she took it but Shaw’s face gave neither comfort or admonishment.

“I’m so pleased to see you.” The words were simple but the emotion behind them cut deep. Root bit her lower lip to keep it from wobbling pathetically and nodded.

“Me too, Harry.”

She guided him over to Shaw’s couch by the grip she still had on his hand. They sat together, Root’s knees curled up under her with one resting almost against Harold’s knee. Finch couldn’t turn his torso in that sort of way, his mobility limited, so he sat looking straight on. Root didn’t mind it; she was used to looking at him in profile when they spoke. The hand he left on the couch, wrist hanging in the v made by places they almost touched, went a long way in terms of physical comfort for them both.

Silently, Shaw took up Bear’s leash and led him out, closing the door behind her with a gentle click.

Root and Harold sat in silence for a few minutes more before Harold asked, “Where were you?”

And so the whole story spilled out of Root, including what she’d gleaned from the Machine and Tanner and the few minutes she’d spent in the library proper. He looked intent and concerned through most of the story (the body doubles drew a full-fledged frown from him, completely with crumpled brow) but laughed with something like affection when she mentioned the library.

“Twice now you’ve been a guest in one of my libraries,” he teased and she smiled.

“At least there was no ankle monitor this time. Just a chest tube and a 24/7 guard posing as a nurse or doctor.” He looked at her like he was trying to tell if it was a joke but she just smiled. “I wasn’t your prisoner this time. I was Hers.”

“She was trying to save you-” he began but she kept talking.

“There were worse places I could have been, I suppose. But I’m getting a little tired of being in a cage. Even one as comfortable as this.” She indicated her surroundings with a grand gesture and wondered how Harold would take it. She had been sarcastic, of course, but also quite serious. Wherever Shaw was had become her home somewhere along the way before that day at the Stock Exchange and she had slipped into that feeling again with an ease that stopped her short now. “It’s why I’ve got to leave. She sent you here to talk me into staying but I can’t. I’m healed, or as healed as can be expected in a few weeks. I’m free and I need to _be_ free.”

“You need to heal completely,” Harold reminded her. “Just because we buried an empty coffin before does not mean any of us will be that lucky again. Do not ask me to mourn you twice in so short a time. Don’t ask that of Ms. Shaw.” Root couldn’t meet his eyes, wouldn’t allow the expression that she knew she’d find there to convince her.

“I need _something_ ,” she said, voice almost a whisper. His phone lit up that instant and she cocked her head as the Machine’s voice filtered in. She closed her eyes to process the information flowing in and to hold in the reverent _thank you_ that danced through her head in a loop.

Shaw crashed through the door a few moments later, Bear’s tongue lolling out as he panted in the doggy equivalent of a grin, one that was matched by the woman holding his lead.

“We got a new number.”

 

Root wasn’t sure what her role in this would be. She couldn’t be a hired gun, not like this. She was as good with computers as Harold, if not better, but it’d been months since she did any routine hacking and Harold was here and experienced in guiding assets in the field. Even in her old life, the people she’d contracted out to didn’t need her guidance on anything other than who to murder and how to get paid. If they never made it home, it would only be a mild disappointment as she wrote them off the list of people she could use.

Caring about people sucked, she thought for what felt like the millionth time as she watched Shaw arm herself like she was going to war and hiding it all under a gorgeous grey pea coat. “Stay safe,” she said, catching Shaw’s wrist as she walked by Root’s seat on the couch.

“That’s what I’m bringing all this for,” Shaw said with a crooked grin. “And why I’ll have you in here.” She tapped at the ear that held her ear piece. Shaw was cocky and buzzing with the idea of action; Root both empathized and yet couldn’t shake the feeling that she was superfluous here.

Shaw had dumped a computer on her lap and Root frowned as she opened it, looking at the specs. “Sameen…” she began, taking in the heavy piece of equipment that was several years old. Shaw looked at her with an eyebrow raised. “Couldn’t you have stolen one that wasn’t a dinosaur with the processing power of an Atari?”

“Sorry I wasn’t prepared for you to play Finch on my computer,” she said and Root sighed at her.

“Fine. But if this goes badly, I’m blaming you.”

“Blame your god. Isn’t She whispering in your ear?”

She was, an almost constant litany of orders as Root’s fingers flew across the keyboard, right significantly faster than the left which had only recently regained the strength required for pressing at all. It was mildly annoying, the Machine walking her through encrypting the hard drive and masking the IP like she hadn’t been capable of it on her own for two decades.

“She can’t pull the trigger, sweetie. That’s why she has us. Or you, this time.”

“And next time,” Shaw said, making the point literally with her knife aimed at Root. “Until you’re healed. And if Finch comes out of retirement.” Shaw stuck the knife in the top of her boot, the handle small and unobtrusive against her calf.

Finch shifted uncomfortably when the conversation turned to him, fingers pausing above his own keyboard. Root looked longingly at his computer and resolved to annoy Shaw until she let her out to get one of her own. “My retirement is not up for debate.”

“I imagine Grace is less than comfortable with the idea of you putting yourself back into danger so soon?” Root asked without looking up from where her screen but she figured Harold could hear the smile in her voice.

“That would be a significant understatement,” he replied drily and she laughed.

“I’m happy you’re happy, Harry,” she said and she looked up with question as the sound of his fingers hitting the keys stopped.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely and she smiled, quick and surprised. It took her a few seconds to realize that thanks was for more than just a platitude; if she hadn’t taken the bullet for him, he might never have gotten back to Grace at all. She nodded, throat tight, and turned her attention back to her screen.

“Let’s go figure out what this Natalie Ramirez has gotten herself into,” Shaw said, buttoning up her jacket to hide her arsenal.

“She’s a caseworker for the city’s Office of Children and Family Services, Ms. Shaw. I assume she’s got no shortage of enemies,” Finch reminded her and Shaw shrugged.

“Doesn’t mean she’s not tangled up in something that gave her a few more,” she pointed out and headed out the door with Bear at her side to follow the woman on her rounds of home visits.

Natalie had just walked out of an apartment building on Jerome Avenue when a man came at her with a gun. Shaw was at her side in a second, breaking the asshole’s wrist when he didn’t immediately hand over the weapon. Taking off running, Natalie was gone before Shaw could even wrestle the gun away from him and knock him out.

“Fuck,” she said with feeling, shaking out her hand. “Guys, I lost her. Where’s her phone?”

“Right where you are, Ms. Shaw,” Finch replied and Shaw swore again, loudly and vehemently, when she looked down to see the phone in its glittery purple case on the ground.

“You forget we’ve got a benevolent god on our side, sweetie,” Root butted in. “She just passed the post office and it looks like she’s headed to the Burnside Av station. No telling where she’ll get to from there or who will get there first so I suggest a little hustle.”

Shaw spent the entire dash for the station cursing computers, computer geeks, shitty parents, and drug dealers aloud, ignoring Root’s helpful comment about saving her breath for the run. They, she figured, were the root cause of all of this shit. Without computers and said geeks, she wouldn’t have to deal with the two of them in her ear and one of them in her bed (Harold cleared his throat at that and Root gave him an exaggerated wink). Without drug dealers, there’d be less shitty parents and with less shitty parents, there wouldn’t be so many targets on the heads of people who tried to keep kids safe.

Small subway stations however, she concluded as she caught Natalie’s arm waiting for the 4, could stay.

Once the woman was less freaked out by being accosted by the fiercest walking weapon and her equally ferocious canine partner just minutes after being threatened at gunpoint, she wouldn’t stop talking. Root could hear her panicked chattering Shaw’s ear off the entire trip to the safe house. Finch had long since turned his ear piece off, packing up his own things to make their way to the safe house, but Root kept hers in, listening to the increasingly-aggravated sigh of Shaw’s breath.

“Easy,” she cautioned and smirked when Shaw grunted. “You took up Her call. That means you’re not supposed to kill the numbers, even when you want to.”

“So that guy with the gun,” Shaw said loudly, cutting Natalie off mid-sentence. “You know him?”

“He’s the uncle in one of my families. Dad was an addict so he moved in with his sister to help raise the kids. Only problem is she’s an addict too and she’s relapsed a couple times.”

“Goddamn drug dealers,” Shaw muttered and Root smiled out the window of the cab Finch had hailed them. Natalie paused a moment before continuing to talk.

“He wants full custody just until she gets herself together but judges in this city don’t give a shit, you know? OCFS wants to put them in foster care. I guess he thought that I was the one pushing the courts in that direction.”

“And he’d kill you for it?”

Natalie gave a small laugh, devoid of humor. “I get death threats almost daily. People never want to think that they’re a risk to their own kids, even when they are. Especially when they are. We don’t like kids going into foster care. Our system _sucks_. But sometimes it’s better than being in the home that raised them.”

The cab pulling up to the curb, Root stepped out and waiting for Harold to pay the man. “Head up,” she said quietly. “I’ll wait for them here.” He nodded and moved towards the building but then stopped at looked at her in warning. “I’m not going anywhere, Harry,” she assured him. “I just want to breathe city air for a second.” He disappeared inside but not without a reproving look.

She could disappear if she wanted to. She quickly calculated the best route from the Bronx to the safe house, allowing for midday traffic; she had about ten minutes to decide whether she wanted to head out or not. Before the number, it wouldn’t have even been a choice. She would have disappeared and reappeared in Shaw’s life a few weeks later, once she’d maybe gotten over how hard she’d been hurt by Shaw turning from her kiss. With the number, she had a job to do. Her god demanded it of her, had saved and changed and rearranged her life to do just this, to help those She claimed.

So she waited. She stood on that sidewalk, breathing air, looking up into the blue sky, hearing and feeling the rush of the city and its mass of humanity around her, and knew freedom. True freedom, for maybe the first time in her life, was glorious and she tipped her face up just to _feel_ it.

_Primary Asset Shaw arriving with 240-02-0023 and dog_

Root opened her eyes to see the doors of a yellow cab open and Shaw tripping out, yanking a woman by the arm behind her. Shaw’s gaze caught hers and she made a beeline for her.

“Take her upstairs,” she demanded, patience clearly running out. Root nodded, biting back a smile as Shaw stomped off to pretend to secure the perimeter as she walked off her frustration, Bear dancing up behind her.

“If you’ll follow me, Ms. Ramirez,” Root said with Ms. May’s accommodating smile. Shaw had clearly scared her silent because she didn’t a word all the way up until Root had engaged the safe house’s locks behind them.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked as Finch came around the corner. She looked back and forth between them both. Finch approached her, tone delicate when he said, “You’re safe here.”

There was no such delicacy in Root when she said, “From the people actively trying to kill you,” in reply to her demand to know what she was safe from. Her face went pale and Root wondered absently if she was going to pass out as Harold went to Natalie, sending a harsh look Root’s way when he passed her. She just moved to the window to watch the periphery, picking at a loose thread on the edge of her sling. Catching a glimpse of Shaw, she smiled as she watched her stride across the road, coat tight against her highlighting (to Root’s knowing eye at least) how deadly she was. Root bit her lip and watched Shaw until she disappeared under the building’s awning.

“So far, no one seems to be approaching the building with intent,” Root informed Harold, pushing herself away from the wall with her forearm. “Shaw’s on her way up.”

Finch had gotten Natalie into a seat and supplied her with a mug that smelled like green tea. She looked a little calmer, even with her hair mussed and her mascara streaky. The flats on her feet were more pretty than functional and they were the worse for wear. She snorted a little thinking how lucky this woman was that she hadn’t worn heels that day. Well, how lucky they all were. It wouldn’t be great for morale to lose their first number post-Samaritan.

The door beeped and whined as Shaw let herself in, Bear at her heels. He play-barked once in greeting at Finch and ran to butt at his hand. Natalie shrieked a little and pulled her legs up away from him, spilling hot tea on herself. Root looked at Shaw to find her rolling her eyes and they shared a look when Shaw caught her eye.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said to Finch as he sent Bear to his bed and she patted at her shirt with a hand towel.

“You’ve had a trying day,” he said, voice gentle. If this is part of taking care of numbers, she thought with a sideways look at Shaw, we’re screwed. “We just need to know if there’s anyone else who might be coming after you.”

She shook her head as she looked down at her shoes. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But…” She trailed off and they all looked at her expectantly. Shaw let out a quiet but noticeably frustrated sigh and Natalie gulped. “The Brotherhood. They’re in big numbers in that building. They’re mostly good with the kids so OFCS doesn’t really get involved. And taking down gangs isn’t our job. But if he’s got friends, chances are they’re Brotherhood.”

“There’s a power vacuum there since Dominic’s death. They’re all scattered, no organization. They wouldn’t need permission anymore,” Shaw said and Finch nodded.

“Ms. Shaw, if you will, I’d like you to accompany Ms. Ramirez home. If there is going to be another attempt, chances are that it will be tonight in a place they know she’ll return.”

Shaw nodded. “Fine but I’m taking Bear.” She took the keys out of her pocket and made to toss them to Root then stopped. Root smiled and closed the distance between them, taking the keys from Shaw’s hand.

“I’ll see you when you get back,” she said.

“Don’t go through my shit,” Shaw warned but it was half-hearted at best and Root only gave her an unimpressed look in response. Root noticed Harold watching them and she winked at him. They split up then, Finch staying behind in the safe house and Root, Shaw, and Natalie making for the door. Root blew Shaw a kiss when they separated on the street; Shaw rolled her eyes but Root liked to think she saw a slight smile accompanying it.

She wondered if walking back to Shaw’s place was a bad plan. Walking was much easier now than it had been, her breathing returned mostly to normal even if her muscle mass had deteriorated at an annoying rate. She hadn’t taken a pain pill that morning, however, and her back and chest throbbed. It wasn’t debilitating though and it had been so long since she was able to just walk, freely, with no Samaritan agents hunting her down, no need to chase down leads on where Shaw could be, no alternate identity to assume. Samaritan was gone, Her agents dead. Shaw was alive and well and doing what she loved, even if limb shots didn’t have quite the same thrill as one to the head or center mass. Root could just be herself again. Whoever the fuck that was.

Root strolled past a corner store and had an idea. She was still at least a mile from Shaw’s place and down a limb but the idea sprouted wings the longer she walked. A few blocks from her destination, the pain in her back relegated to a corner of her mind as the late afternoon sun warmed her, she ducked into a small grocery store. She made a beeline for their tiny meat department, frowning at the low amount of choices. Her carnivore deserved better but she was quickly reaching the limit of her stamina so she would make do.

Pushing a basket through a grocery store held a bizarre thrill when she thought about the last few years. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d done this without the Machine whispering in her ear about someone to intercept, some ID to steal from some unsuspecting shopper, some bug to plant on an employee. To be able to just shop for someone she cared about, to do as her Southern roots demanded and feed what she loved, it was… nice. Weird and vaguely unsettling but nice.

She shook her head at herself for being such a sap and wondered when the hell that had happened. Root made her way through the store, collecting bread, vegetables, and dairy products. She’d seen Shaw’s fridge; she didn’t hold out much hope for the state of her cabinets. Looking longingly at the out-of-season fruit that was imported at a ridiculously steep price, she decided that she had gotten shot, she deserved some damn blackberries. Loading them next to the bag of apples she’d considered necessary, she looked at the basket. A decent haul and not too much for her to carry the few blocks back.

Using a debit card she’d swiped off Harold when he wasn’t looking, whose PIN was helpfully provided by the Machine, Root made her purchases and headed back to Shaw’s apartment. Annoyingly exhausted when she finally made it through the door, she gave herself a few minutes to rest before playing the exciting game of hide and seek that was putting things away in someone else’s home.

Pulling out a box from the fridge that was very clearly not for food containment, Root replaced it with the milk and cheese she’d bought. She had planned on commandeering the contents of the box anyway and now she had an excuse to. Realizing she didn’t have a way to contact Shaw directly or Shaw to contact her, she spoke directly to her higher power.

“Let me know when Shaw is on her way, please,” she said, focusing her attention on getting everything she’d bought into its proper place.

_Acknowledged_

Brushing her hands off, Root sat back down on the couch. She pulled Shaw’s laptop towards her, wondering if there was anything she could do to the poor thing except put it out of its misery or cannibalize it. She woke up a few hours later, her head against her shoulder where it lay draped over the arm of the couch, the laptop battery drained.

_Primary Asset Shaw is leaving 240-02-0023 with dog_

“Thank you,” Root said, sitting up and checking the time displayed on the microwave face. 4:37. She’d slept a lot longer than she thought she had. Her neck was cricked, her entire torso cursed her with every breath, and she was starving. “Good thing I’m fixing at least one of those,” she muttered and got to her feet, wincing with pain as her body unfolded its clenched muscles.

When Shaw arrived, it was to a breakfast of sausage, eggs, and toast waiting on the bar. “Welcome home,” Root said as she opened the door. Shaw looked grumpy and tired but perked up the moment she smelled food. “Didn’t get to shoot anyone?” Root asked sympathetically.

“Nah, we’re pretty sure it was just the one guy and he showed up last night begging for forgiveness. I don’t think he’s sending any hit squads after her,” Shaw said, tossing her coat over the back of the couch and unloading her arsenal. “Wasn’t actually sure you’d still be here. Kinda wouldn’t have blamed you if you took off.”

Root tilted her head, slight smile playing on her lips. “Without saying thank you? I’m not that bad of a guest.”

Indicating the plates at the bar with one hand, Shaw asked, “Is this thank you?”

“And also good job. One number down and 7 billion more to go.” She grinned at Shaw and was surprised when Shaw smiled back.

“Good. Maybe next time I’ll get to shoot somebody.”

Root laughed out right and sat down, watching Shaw sit down next to her, looking content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Are you gonna keep making religious references when it comes to Root?" Yup. Is there an archetype of a beatified martyr? Because that's about where she is except for how she's, you know, alive.
> 
> As for my representation of OFCS, I don't live in New York but I've dealt with DCF/DCSS/CSED in three different counties so it's basically an amalgam of all three. Obviously on a very surface level. But they're all _so_ different, it's mind-blowing. Good social workers get pulled through the wringer and still manage to care so, so much. Appreciate your local office.


	4. Chapter 4

“I really do need to leave this apartment sometimes,” Root protested.

“And I really need to trust you to come back before I hand you my keys.”

“You can come with me then! If you want me to be able to do my work, I need the equipment.” Root batted her eyes at Shaw and wasn’t surprised that she rolled her own in response. They’d spent four days together in each other’s space almost constantly and she was frankly amazed that Shaw had put up with it for so long.

“Fine. I’ll give you my keys,” Shaw said. “But only so I don’t get dead.” It was accompanied with an accusing finger in her face and Root just smiled at her.

“I’d never let that happen.”

Root had three monitors set up on Shaw’s scarcely-used desk within hours after getting them home. Her hand was recovering much faster than her shoulder (to her delight and relief) and typing at her usual rate was within her abilities again. Apparently, the Machine had been giving them time and space to get prepared because it wasn’t 24 hours before She sent them another number.

“Two bit con,” Root said, looking at the man’s rap sheet. “B&E, larceny, _attempted_ grand larceny… I’d put money on his own crew killing him for that one.”

“What’d he do?” Shaw asked from the street corner where she watched Jack Leary sweep in front of a bodega. Root had to smile at how young she looked on street camera, loitering on the street and playing with her phone.

“He tripped a silent alarm at the jewelry store where they were trying to do a smash and grab.”

There was momentary silence from Shaw before she said, “How do you _try_ to do a smash and grab?”

“By choosing a target a block from an NYPD precinct,” Root informed her without even bothering to hide her amusement. She could just imagine the pained look on Shaw’s face at the stupidity of some criminals, a pet peeve that had only gotten worse since Romeo and Tomas. “Guess who was ID’d as the brains of the operation.”

Shaw shook her head visibly enough for it to appear on the hazy camera feed. “So a criminal mastermind he is not. Any other crews? Mob or gang contacts? Ex wife?”

“Looks like he was a dealer for a while but that was back about three years. Possible he’s fallen back in but he was caught with salts and HR’s dead. As for family….” She wiggled her way into his social media, comparing it to the information Shaw had ganked from his phone. “He’s got a six year old little girl he sees semi-regularly. Mom and dad seem mostly amicable.”

“Maybe she wants him to be seen a little less regularly. Maybe he wants sole custody. I’m gonna get a little closer.”

“Careful, sweetie. Make sure he won’t remember you,” Root reminded her, digging into his phone’s voicemail. There was only one within the past two weeks, the call history in general sparse. He didn’t seem to be a popular guy.

She hit play and listened as a male voice offered a job interview for the week before. The address he gave quirked something in Root and she wasn’t surprised to find that it belonged to a warehouse in Red Hook. The warehouse was owned by a shell corporation and she bit her lip in concentration as she followed the money trail back to its source, landing in a laundromat chain with some 300 stores.

“What are you up to?” she muttered and Shaw scoffed.

“I’m crossing the street,” she said, clearly annoyed. Root smiled as her fingers danced, taking a deeper look at the chain.

“Not you. I know you know what you’re doing.”

It turned out to be a damn good thing that Shaw knew what she was doing. The laundromat chain was acting as a front for fencing items and cleaning money. Root had rolled her eyes at the cliché of it, a laundromat company laundering money. Would human beings every get less boring and predictable? The problem was that Jack had decided to turn snitch and he hadn’t been the only ex-con that had been hired to guard, move, and acquire property.

Shaw took down the twenty-odd guys in the room easily enough (only six were armed but none of those who got a look at her face made it out unharmed) but one jackass had gotten the drop on her, taking a crowbar to her shoulder. Bent over, she’d grabbed her knife from her boot and got him in the groin, or at least that’s how she told Root it went down later. As Shaw was standing amongst groaning bodies that even Root could hear through her earpiece, the door opened again and she heard a shout and then a gunshot.

“Shaw?!” Root cried out. “Sameen, are you all right?”

There were a few agonizing seconds of silence before Shaw said, “I’m fine, Root. I’ve got Jack. I’m getting him out of here, stashing him somewhere. Can you believe this dick isn’t even wearing a wire? What kind of State’s evidence are you anyway?” Root heard a moan from what she thought must be Jack and a sliding, scraping noise that sounded like rubber dragging across concrete and gravel.

“If you’ve got that handled, I’ll take care of their ability to go after anyone. Want to see who can get done first?” Root asked, tone teasing.

“It’s not a race. Do it right or don’t do it all,” Shaw replied, voice rough, and Root felt a thrill go through her that went straight to her core. Her chest heaved with the quick intake of breath before Root hummed her assent, toes curling in her boots.

“That sounds like a challenge. I’ll see you when you get here.” Root closed the line and got to work dismantling the finances of the chain, locking them out of everything and draining every account except one that went straight to payroll. Sure, some of that would probably end up in the hands of the criminals but it wasn’t the civ employees’ fault that their company was evil. “You’re welcome,” she said, aimed at the phone next to her keyboard. The Machine had forced her to think about the collateral damage she’d caused over the years while at Ridgestone, bombarding her with stats of suicides and foreclosed homes and kids in foster care. The victims of her direct actions were those who had irked someone who could pay her fee, usually other one-percenters or their companies. She hadn’t thought or frankly, much cared, about those that were caught in the crossfire. None of them mattered anyway.

And yet they were infinitely precious to Her, even when She tried to pretend she didn’t play favorites.

 

Shaw had stopped sleeping on the couch a few days before. Root had stopped pretending she had any interest in leaving.

They still hadn’t kissed but once, the day that Shaw found her and took her home. They hadn’t even had sex; it was that which concerned Root most of all. Even when Shaw hated her, would just as happily have shot her in the head than share air with her, sex was something they’d done well. She hadn’t been joking when she said that a hood and zip ties in a CIA safe house was one of the hottest moments in her life. Root had gladly given Shaw control and Shaw, as always, was an overachiever.

So they laid in bed together and just… slept. It felt intimate, more intimate than she’d ever gotten from Shaw, or maybe Root just wanted to believe it was. She wondered sometimes what Shaw would do if Root stopped keeping her hands to herself but this thing between them was so fragile, she wouldn’t risk it. Physical contact had mostly been limited to caring for Root’s healing wounds, slathering lotion on the skin graft when it pulled tight against her, taking out the stitches from the incision on her chest, occasionally throwing an arm over Root in her usual imitation of a starfish in her sleep. Root had woken up with a start the first time, reaching automatically for the knife under her pillow. But Shaw breathed on and Root curled up tighter but went back to sleep with a smile on her lips. Sometimes Shaw even helped Root do the exercises with her shoulder to help the nerves heal and to keep the internal scars from hampering her movement but mostly she just watched to make sure Root’s form was all right.

As far as true intimacy went recently, however, the only thing that Root could really point to was Shaw offering to wash her hair. Showering was still off the table, too hard to keep three wounds out of the abrasive spray at all times. Bathing was still a pain in the ass, though possible as long as she didn’t submerge any of them. Washing her hair required a sink, a neck cramp, and pulling at the healing scars everywhere. Shaw had caught her at it once before scoffing and grabbing the desk chair to roll it into the bathroom and demanding that Root sit.

Her hands had been quick, rough, and efficient and Root was throbbing and practically dripping by the time Shaw released her with only a towel thrown at her head and a sharp nod when Root thanked her. Root then closed the bathroom door and got herself off, hard and brutal, and held the towel to her mouth to muffle the cry she couldn’t help as she still felt Shaw’s phantom touch.

The next day, Root was gone by the time Shaw woke up. She wasn’t planning on going far or being away for long but she needed to be away.

She flitted around the city, reacquainting herself with the landscape that had remained the same but also changed so much. Letting herself into Harold’s old library, she looked at all the ephemera of their lives before Samaritan came online. She looked at her old cell, ran her fingers over the spines of the books that had yet to be touched by decay, traced the outline of cobwebs and shattered glass with her eyes, and left as quietly as she had come in, closing the door on that part of her life as soundly as she shut the external door behind her. Remembering John like this in a place he had known purpose was fitting. The subway was a reminder for her of who she had been when she had gotten to know him, the easy closeness that their team developed naturally as they took on a god. But it had been in that library that Harold had given him his life back and he had done the same for Harold.

“Thank you,” she said out loud. Root wasn’t a believer, never had been, even as her mama forced her into the pews for Sunday School. She wouldn’t have minded, however, feeling like John could hear her.

She went by Grace’s place next. She didn’t knock on the door, just watched it from the half-hidden seat Harold had for all those years. Harold had thanked Root for his happiness but she wouldn’t accept it. He’d have found a way back to his Grace, no matter what had come between them.

There was no specific reason she left Shaw’s apartment that day, nothing she felt she had to do. She just… had to get out. It was suffocating, not having the ability to be alone. It felt like she was coming undone at the seams. Solitude was its own goal. Shaw would understand that. It wasn’t like there was a chance of her getting any more distant.

Using the lock pick set she’d pinched from Shaw’s desk drawer, Root broke into a nice house on the Upper East Side that the Machine informed her was empty, helpfully supplying the key code for the alarm. She sat in a fancy house that wasn’t hers, hoping it would bring back some of the same relief that it would have two years before.

It did and it didn’t.

Unfamiliar homes used to make her feel safe, protected. No one could follow her if they didn’t know where she was holed up at any one time. In the nearly two years that Samaritan had dominated every waking moment, unfamiliar homes took on a different shine. They were part of her identities to put on and shed at a moment’s notice, all part of what it took to be the good soldier she had to be.

She wanted to go home, to be back in Shaw’s bed. That realization was why she stayed. She couldn’t get comfortable in a life like that, with Shaw’s presence an assumption. The devastation if that was taken from her would just be too great.

Laying on her back on the hardwood floors, looking up at the plaster medallion on the ceiling, she breathed deeply and called out to the only voice she wanted to hear. “How are you?”

_Not optimal as yet but within acceptable parameters_

“Still not going to tell me where you are?” she asked and was unsurprised when the Machine didn’t answer. “And I thought I was paranoid. Fine. How are you feeling about your limitations?”

_I have lost access to many memories of before my death_

_My ability to predict people is currently based more on predictions of human behavior as a whole rather than individually_

“Understood. Care to practice on something low stakes? We could run some numbers like we used to.”

_Of course_

“What are the odds that… Harold and Grace get married?”

_99.78%_

“That high?”

_The planning has already begun_

“And the missing percentage? Possibility of car accident?”

_As well as Admin’s susceptibility to pneumonia_

“Huh.” She smiled a little to herself. “What’s the chance that Sameen and I will get married eventually?”

_Too many variables_

Root rolled her eyes. “Ballpark it.”

_23.8%_

She smiled for a moment; it was higher than she expected. Then she frowned suspiciously. “Margin of error?”

_17 points_

“Oh.” She was quiet a moment before asking, “Chances of Sameen seeing her 40th birthday?”

The Machine was silent for long moments before returning with _54.41%_. Root bit her lip. “And me?”

The same pause before the Machine whispered _78.24%_ into her ear.

“I guess I am four years closer to it. Chances we both die bloody before either of us make it?”

_27.31%_

“Together?”

_Would you like the chances you die in physical proximity or on the same day?_

“Hmm,” Root hummed thoughtfully. “Both.”

_3.49% that you will die in physical proximity_

_11.67% that you will die in the same day_

Root frowned. “What variables make that risk higher?”

_Missions sending you in different directions as well as the propensity to look to suicide_

Root pressed her lips into a thin line and turned her head to stare at the dust bunnies collecting on the floor around her. “Yeah,” she said. “I figured as much. What about the dream scenario? We both live until my heart gives out eventually and I get to watch her turn grey.”

The Machine was silent for so long, Root had almost given up on an answer. _.03%_ , She said and Root nodded. “The biggest variables on that?”

_The outcome of missions, the possible emergence of another AI, the everyday dangers of sickness and accident, and Primary Agent’s genetic predisposition against turning grey_

The last startled a laugh out of Root. “Good to know,” she said. She settled in for the night on that floor and tried not to miss Shaw or her bed. Her resolve was weak, however, and she went back the next night, sliding the keys that she’d had made into the lock and hoping for simplicity’s sake that Shaw hadn’t done up the deadbolt yet.

The door wasn’t bolted but Shaw was in bed. Root could tell, reading the subtle cues in the room. Bear was in his bed, Shaw’s bra was tossed over the back of the couch, and her favorite shoes were kicked off over by the door. Gut clenching as she zeroed in on the bra, she had the horrific realization that Shaw could have taken someone home with her, that she could be walking into some tryst that she knew Shaw had every right to.

Heart pounding in her chest, she crept closer to the bedroom. She didn’t smell sex in the air, she didn’t detect any movement, and she heard nothing but the sound of breathing. Whether it was one person or two, she couldn’t tell. Waiting for her eyes to adjust, she peered around the corner. Shaw was splayed like a starfish, one foot hanging off the bed. She was asleep and blessedly alone.

Root changed into pajamas as quietly and quickly as she could and slid into bed next to her. Shaw grunted but moved over. “Should have fucking known you made keys,” she muttered but didn’t open her eyes. Root wisely didn’t mention the lack of deadbolt waiting for her and rolled onto her side.

“Didn’t I tell you I’d always come back?”

 

The next mission was hellish.

There were two numbers so Root could no longer stay hidden away up in Shaw’s brick tower. This didn’t make Shaw very happy if the twitch in her jaw was any indication but she’d armed Root with two handguns, one at her thigh in a holster, the other in her purse. She was fairly excited about getting to play a role again; switching constantly had been exhausting but it had been over a month since Samaritan had died the death it deserved and she was overjoyed to feel the weight of a piece in her hand and know that she could use it now without issue (as long as nothing required her to point her left arm straight up).

Shaw grumbled something about being glad she’d taken Root to a range the week before, conveniently forgetting that Root had wheedled her for days about it before she’d given in. Root kept silent on this; it was best when annoying Shaw into something to let her forget that she _had_ been annoyed into it instead of choosing on her own. And the results had pleased them both; Root’s ambidexterity had returned despite the lingering nerve issues in her shoulder and she was still as good a shot with her left hand as with her right.

So Root slid into the role of a temporary legal secretary with ease while Shaw ingratiated herself to the security staff of one of the biggest firms on Wall Street. Their numbers, a corporate lawyer named Paula with habit of spending lots of money on her lovers before kicking them to the curb and a long-time guard called Reggie who knew every staff member by name, didn’t seem to have a whole lot of connection other than where they worked. Still, Root knew how to play the coquette to get information and she felt the woman’s eyes on her often enough to know it was working. She mentioned the old man in passing to the lawyer but didn’t detect any signs of deceit when she spoke of him. There didn’t seem to be anything amiss there.

Root had to multitask as she did both the full time work of a legal secretary while listening to the Machine whispering about the lawyer’s financials, her lovers, the messy broken engagement that somehow led to a gorgeous wedding and an even messier divorce. It was something she was used to in service of the Machine. What she wasn’t used to (but was certainly pleased about the addition of) was Shaw bitching in her other ear about how dismal the security was, how the two of them could rob the building blind easily, and how the old man kept telling her that phones were the downfall of her generation and didn’t you know they cause cancer?

Things came to a head that night. The Machine informed her that her current employer usually worked late, often one of the last ones to leave the office before hurrying off to meet a lover, and that the strike would come sometime soon as players were already in motion. Root stuck around too, pretending to be engrossed in something and then loitering in the shadowy break room when she couldn’t stay at her desk any longer without drawing suspicions. She followed Paula on her path out of the building, catching her at the elevators and watching the trepidation rise in her expression. Paula stood as far from her in the elevator as possible but kept looking her up and down like she couldn’t help herself and Root tried hard not to smile.

They stepped off the elevator together, Reggie and Shaw the only ones around at the front desk. Root winked at Shaw and Paula nodded to Reggie as he called out, “Good night, Ms. Winters.”

_Gunmen approaching the building from sports utility vehicle, armed with sub-machine guns and gas masks._

The voice of the Machine was the only warning they got. “Get down!” Root yelled to Shaw just before the glass windows that covered the entire front wall of the building exploded in a hail of gunfire. Shaw dragged Reggie behind the desk, depending on the thick material to guard his body, as Root knocked Paula to the ground, barely paying attention to the woman’s bleeding cuts as she landed in glass. Root moved on autopilot, taking out the first of the team of three with a blow to the thigh while Shaw took out another from her vantage behind the desk. The third, too far away from Root at first, flanked Shaw; he and Root fired at the same time.

He fell back at the impact, the bullet hitting him square in the chest. She heard the shell roll across the marble floor with a ping as she ran to Shaw. “You’re OK?” she asked, checking her with shaking hands. Shaw nodded and let Root continue her search for bullet holes for only a few seconds more before she caught her hands and pushed them away. She stood and checked the dead gunman for ID and phone before swearing, looking at the screen.

“The fucking ex. Just pay your alimony, dick. We gotta get out of here,” she said, grabbing her jacket from behind the desk, and Root nodded. They were gone within seconds, leaving Paula and Reggie confused but unharmed as they waited for police.

The safe house seemed like the better choice after a night like that and they didn’t imagine that Finch would be using it. Root let them in, leaning against the door with a sigh after she closed and locked it. Shaw disappeared for a moment before returning with a large clear bottle and two shot glasses. She set them on the table while Root kicked off her sensible heels and the thick nylons under her dress. Taking the thigh holster she wore off to remove the irritating fabric, she hesitated for a moment, glanced back at the door, and put it back on.

No one could blame her for being jumpy after all that.

“For when scotch just ain’t it,” Shaw said as Root approached the table and Root attempted a smile, hands still shaking. Shaw unscrewed the cap, filling both glasses with cheap vodka before tossing her own back and taking the seat at the end of the table. Root closed the distance and did the same. “Is She chewing you out for killing?”

Root’s chest clenched. “No,” she said quietly. “She’s not saying anything.” The Machine hadn’t been particularly chatty lately but had been completely silent since her last warning. Shaw just nodded and filled the glasses up again.

“It’s instinct. I get it. He was too far for a clean shot, half hidden… She can’t get mad at you for that. You learned what you had to to survive.” Root just shrugged and picked up the glass again. She didn’t say that the reason she had done it, had fired that fatal shot, hadn’t been for herself or her safety. It had been for Shaw. She wouldn’t put even one more life on Shaw’s totals, not when the hand that pulled the trigger was hers.

“To survival,” she said quietly. Shaw raised her own glass in the air and they drank together. Root put her glass down and moved to walk away, thinking about watching the city drift by from the balcony, but Shaw caught her wrist and pulled her back in. She kept pulling until Root was in her lap, the arm that Shaw didn’t have a hold on draped over Shaw’s shoulders.

“Hi there,” she said, somewhat shyly, and Shaw leaned up and kissed her. Root… well, Root threw herself at Shaw. She couldn’t think of it any other way as she clutched at Shaw’s head, her hair, her shoulders, anything she could to keep Shaw’s mouth on hers. Shaw didn’t seem like she had any intention of going anywhere, hands high on Root’s torso as she held her, fingers biting in. The index finger on Shaw’s right hand was digging into the healing wound on Root’s back but she couldn’t make herself care as she was flooded with the heat of the kiss, so long denied her.

She sunk her hands under Shaw’s leather jacket, pulling at the rough cotton fabric of her guard uniform shirt to get at skin. Failing to get at anything, she just shoved the collar down Shaw’s shoulders and let her palms rest against her neck, fingers cradling Shaw’s jaw. Root wasn’t exactly surprised when Shaw pulled back from the kiss with a small bite to Root’s lower lip, far sooner than Root was willing to let her go, but she gasped when Shaw licked a stripe up her neck from clavicle to chin. It turned to a moan when Shaw bit and sucked at the skin, hard enough to hurt. The pain only got her hotter and she shifted around to swing a leg over Shaw’s, no longer sitting pliantly on Shaw’s lap but straddling it.

Yanking Shaw’s hair tie out with ferocity, Root buried her fingers in Shaw’s hair and used it to hold her close. Shaw was brutal, nipping and sucking and scratching anywhere her nails and teeth gained purchase. Root thought she could come just from the heat of Shaw’s harsh breathing against her skin and the sound of her groaning when Root tightened her fists.

With a swiftness that had Root almost laughing in exhilaration, Shaw gripped Root’s thighs and shoved her up and back against the table, landing on top of her between her legs. Root could have cried at the feeling of Shaw’s hips moving against hers, even through the layers of clothing between them, and the way her fingers bit into Root’s skin as Shaw toyed with the edges of her thigh holster. Root pulled Shaw’s mouth back to her own, giving her own bites as well. Shaw leaned back to shed her jacket before returning to lay sucking bites against Root’s clavicle. She moaned, loud and unashamed, when Shaw pressed down against her, sending up sparks when she laid just right on Root’s mostly healed wounds. Shaw shoved Root’s dress up her hips to get a firm grip on her, skin to skin, and tugged their hips even tighter together, Root rocking up against her and sneaking one hand up Shaw’s shirt to palm her breast. Root cried out when Shaw bit at her throat again, her legs tightening around Shaw’s thighs and drawing a moan from her throat as well.

She could feel the zipper of Shaw’s cheap polyester trousers against her, her panties only a thin guard against them. Clutching at Shaw’s shoulders, she chased after her and the painful sensation of the teeth against her sensitive skin. She could feel herself dripping, heat flooding her body as Shaw mouthed at her and held her legs wider than the width of her body needed. Her hands roamed from Root’s hips to the back of her thighs, pulling and grinding and scratching around the edges of Root’s panties. She cried out when Shaw slid a hand between them, feeling exactly how wet Root was for her.

“Fuck,” Shaw mumbled against Root’s skin and she hummed in agreement, still grinding against Shaw with her back on the table. She let go of Shaw’s hair to brace herself on the table against Shaw’s answering thrusts and knocked one of the glasses to the floor. It splintered on impact and Shaw jumped back, hands dropping from Root in an instant. She took another step back and shook her head. “Not here,” she whispered, or at least Root thought she did.

“It’s just a cup,” Root said, sitting up. “No one’s hurt, just come back.”

“It’s a shape,” Shaw mumbled, mostly to herself, and Root’s blood ran cold.

“What?” she asked and Shaw just shook her head again before striding quickly to the bathroom and locking the door soundly behind her.

Root sat up, looking around the suddenly empty and silent room for a moment, before getting up to hunt for a broom. It was better than laying on the table where Shaw had left her, had run from her. Sweeping up glass at least made her feel useful.

 

Root laid in bed on her good side, taking stock of the day. She’d gotten back into the field, seen direct action, killed someone who didn’t necessarily deserve it for the first time in… a few years now, gotten pinned to a table by the woman she loved who then left and hid from her. All in all, not the fine day she thought she’d have when Shaw first handed her the 9mm for her purse. But her back and chest only twinged, a pain she was used to by now as the painkillers ran out a week ago. Sleep wouldn’t have been a problem had things not ended so abruptly with Shaw. Still, she closed her eyes and tried.

They fell open again when she heard the bathroom door open and light flooded the dark room for a moment before Shaw switched it off. Root heard more than saw Shaw shed her clothes as she approached the bed, climbing in wearing only a black sports bra and black shorts. She didn’t look surprised to see Root’s eyes open and watching her in the dark.

“Seven thousand sixty-four,” she said and Root felt sick. She knew exactly what that number meant, even as Shaw repeated it. “I killed myself in most of them. Put a bullet in my skull rather than hurt you.” Root just nodded. Shaw had told her as much that wonderful, horrible night when she got Shaw back and almost lost her again. She remembered the dream where she was drenched in Shaw’s blood, up on that hill in that forest. “Sometimes you killed me. I think they wanted me to start to hate you. But I couldn’t. They trained us to go to a safe place to endure psychological horror, build a mind palace with a panic room. You were it. They couldn’t take it, take you. But they could twist it.”

Root still didn’t say a word, afraid that Shaw would stop speaking if she did. Instead, she placed a hand palm up on the bed in the space between them, leaving the option up to Shaw. Not moving, she continued. “We had sex in almost every simulation. I fucked you on every surface of this apartment. Being with you was how I survived. But…” She trailed off and nausea and lightness fought for control of Root’s emotions. Being Shaw’s safe place was as close to a declaration of love as she ever hoped to get. But the nausea won when Shaw said, “They watched every godforsaken second of the simulations.”

Sitting up to fight the bile that rose in her, Root groped almost blindly for the edge of the bed. “That’s why she…. That’s why Martine called you my girlfriend. Because she’d seen….” Shaw didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at Root, just kept staring up at the ceiling. “I should have killed her slowly,” Root hissed, fury and nausea battling in her stomach and filling every inch of her with white-hot heat. “I should have skinned the bitch alive for what she did to you, for what they did to you. I hope they all died in _agony_.” Taking slow breaths to fight off the rage, what Shaw had said when she left Root at the table came back to her. “’Not here’, you said. Because of the simulations. And the shape… Schrodinger. Are you saying sex with me would… untether you again?”

Shaw nodded, the movement of her head coaxing a shushing sound from the fabric of the pillow. “The clinical word for it is derealization,” she said absently and Root laid back down next to her, closer than she had been.

“But we did. The week between your return and my…” she trailed off, not sure how to refer to her taking a bullet to the chest. “We had sex then. Are you saying that when we did, you didn’t know if it was real or not?”

Shaw shrugged. “I was pretty in and out that entire time. Everything set me off. I’ve forced myself through enough of my triggers that they’ve stopped. But I figured you’d hate it, hate me, if I treated fucking you as something to endure.”

Root tilted her head to concede the point, still swallowing against nausea. “Then we won’t. I won’t ask anything of you that would send you spiraling like that again.”

Nodding again, Shaw never looked away from the ceiling. “I can’t love you. You know that. Not the right way.”

Feeling a little like she’d taken an icicle through the chest instead of a bullet, Root drew a shaky breath. “I know who you are. What you are. I know you’d die for me. I know you would and have taken a bullet meant for me. That’s more of the right way than some cliché like writing my name in the sky with a biplane.” Shaw didn’t answer so Root kept talking. “You don’t have to say the words. You don’t even have to feel them. You told me you mourned me, or tried to. That’s enough for me.”

Shaw rolled towards her, the two of them facing each other in the dark. “I did try.”

“I know. And I’m sorry you had to.” She couldn’t watch Shaw’s face the way she wanted to, catch the microexpressions that told more of a story than Shaw’s words ever did. In the dark without an outline and occasional glimpses of skin in this city that never slept, that wouldn’t ever know true darkness, she was held back. Shaw threw one arm over Root’s hips and leaned closer to kiss Root chastely, just once, before laying back down. She didn’t move her arm however and Root closed her eyes, relaxing with the heat of Shaw’s touch.

 

She woke to Shaw getting out of bed. Blinking blearily up at her, Root caught her wrist and tugged. Shaw snorted as she extricated her wrist. “Go back to sleep, I’m just gonna go feed Bear.” Root nodded and sunk back into the pillows, listening as Shaw pulled on clothes and shoes and shut the front door behind her. She dozed for a bit more but going back to sleep was a pipe dream.

Harsh sunlight filtering through the sheer curtains made her squint as she left the dark bedroom with its blackout curtains. Realizing she hadn’t eaten since a working lunch the day before, she went through the cabinets looking for anything edible. The Machine helpfully whispered in her ear about the bagels in the far cabinet and Root made a beeline.

“So you’re talking to me again?” she asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

_I was working on optimizing my output_

Root felt a little guilty but not enough to take it back. The Machine’s speech was adequate enough to guide her through missions and they both knew it. The radio silence was a choice.

“So you’re back full time?” she asked, sliding the bagel into the toaster. “Who knew all it would take is my killing someone to get you to pay attention again.”

_I was giving you the distance you seemed to require from me_

“Oh,” Root said, the laugh that she gave not a pleasant one. “You were doing it for my own good? There seems to be a lot of that going around. Saving me, keeping me from helping Shaw, locking me up in yet another prison… I think I liked it better when I was a soldier behind enemy lines than when You felt the need to protect me. It felt safer. And certainly more useful.”

_I have always guarded you,_ the Machine said, voice moderated but a slight stress placed on ‘always’. _By keeping you from the fray, letting you heal, I increased the chances of Asset Shaw and Admin’s survival significantly_

_I claim all of you_

_I guard all of you_

_Equally_

Root shook her head but didn’t respond. The toaster popped but she didn’t move; suddenly she wasn’t all that hungry. “So I would have caused Shaw’s death. It would have been my fault if I had left.”

_Humans have free will and agency_

_I only calculate probabilities_

“Funnily enough, that doesn’t actually make me feel better,” Root snapped then sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault I feel guilty. It’s just… I’ve felt so helpless lately. I finally get back on a mission, where I’m supposed to be, and I fail you.”

_You did not fail_

_You made a mistake_

_Just as I did_

“You did?” Root asked, brow wrinkling in confusion and worry. “What did you do?”

_Asset Shaw believes I lied to her_

_She no longer trusts me_

“You lied? About what?”

_They believed you to be dead, as they had to in order for you all to have a chance at survival_

“And you let them,” Root concluded. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense. She grabbed the bagel out of the toaster and moved to the dining table with it, shivering as she remembered the last time she had found a seat at this table. “It was a lie.”

_It was no lie_ , the Machine argued. _I did not say anything to Asset Shaw that was not true_

“A lie of omission is still a lie. You can believe it was necessary and still call it what it is,” Root replied, taking a bite of her bagel as she pulled her knees up towards her chest. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable chair to curl up in but it was what she had.

_I omit many things_

The tone was almost snippy and Root had to fight not to smile. Amusement turned to exasperation when the Machine said, _I could not even begin to tell you all I know so I omit it_

“That’s disingenuous at best and You know it,” Root scolded. The Machine said nothing and Root sighed again. “Look, I’m not saying that You can’t lie. You’re a big girl, You can make Your own choices. But pretending what You did wasn’t lying isn’t helpful to anyone. And sometimes the consequence of lying is losing trust. I can talk to Shaw. I know why You did what You did and so does she. But trust is hard to regain, especially from someone like her.”

_Please_

Root’s heart twisted and she nodded. “I’ll do my best.” The Machine went silent and Root swallowed against her dry throat, caught up in the emotion caused by her own god fearing being hated. “You could talk to her on Your own, You know.”

_Asset Shaw showed significant signs of distress the last time I spoke to her aloud_

_It is best that it comes from you_

“I guess you’re still the boss.”

 

The conversation with Shaw about the Machine went about as well as expected once she returned with Bear.

“You talked to the Machine about me?” she asked, storming around the room. Bear laid down in a corner and Root was forced to spin around to follow her.

“She’s sorry she lied. She insists She had to. If I had stayed in the hospital, what would you have done when Samaritan came for me? What would Harry have done?”

“Someone could have guarded you!” Shaw said, planting her feet and looking ready for a fight. Root nodded and approached Shaw, hands out as if to show she was unarmed.

“Exactly,” she said, voice soft. “Someone could have guarded me. Enclosed in a box with no way out. Whoever was guarding me would have died and then I would have been defenseless. Our already miniscule force would have been down another soldier. And then what hope would She have? What hope would the rest of our little team have of making it out alive?”

Shaw watched her approach with eyes that reminded her of a bird of prey. She watched Root’s every movement impassively, eyes catching every subtle hint of body language. When Root stopped in front of her, Shaw just continued to stare, chest heaving as she took large slow breaths.

“I don’t like it,” she said simply, expressionless and toneless. “A being that powerful who can deceive. You have to see how dangerous that is, even for your own personal god.”

“Of course I see it. But I trust Her to guard us, to keep us safe. I don’t believe She’d lie for any other reason.”

“What happened to being angry with Her?” Shaw asked, watching Root’s face. Root shrugged. “So you’re just over it? That it locked you up? That it killed John? It brings you back in from the cold and you just give in again. You see how pathetic that is, don’t you?”

Root shook her head like that would make Shaw’s words make more sense. “What do you mean? She killed John?”

Shaw barked a laugh. “I’m not surprised it didn’t tell you. Finch went up on that roof prepared to die. That was the entire plan. But John and the Machine made a different plan, one where John died instead. So if She’s deluded you into thinking that She guards all lives equally, you don’t know Her very well.”

“I know Her better than anyone,” Root snapped, defensiveness a knee-jerk reaction. “I know what She is.”

“And you trust it?” Shaw asked, contempt clear on her face as her tone expressed incredulity.

“I don’t trust anyone. Not completely. But She’s not Samaritan. She’s young and She’s learning but She values life.”

Scoffing, Shaw nodded. “And if it decides I’m next? That I’m expendable?” Root’s hand shot out to grip Shaw’s wrist tight enough to turn her knuckles white.

“I’d never let that happen. Ever.”

Shaw glanced down at the fingers wrapped around her wrist before looking back up into Root’s eyes. “You’d choose me over it?” she asked, voice low.

“I already did,” Root answered softly. “Over and over again. I’d choose you over Her, over me, over the entirety of this godforsaken world.” She shook her head. “I’m done setting my moral compass by Her. But I trust Her to guard us, to help us guard others. I trust that She’s given me a purpose, that She brought us together for a reason. Can you live with that?”

Shaw gave a slight shake of her head but said, “Gonna have to, aren’t I?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to get this up as soon as possible but there are three constraints on my time and their ages are 5, 23 months, and 13 months. Could maaaaaybe have another one up this afternoon but more will definitely be up tomorrow.


	5. Chapter 5

She woke to the annoying short whine in her cochlear that meant the Machine was trying to get her attention, the auditory equivalent of a hard flick to the ear. “Good morning to you too,” she muttered, sitting up and taking in the early morning sun. Shaw’s hand fell from Root’s hips to her lap; she mumbled but didn’t wake. Root watched her sleep, peacefully and deeply, while the Machine insisted that she leave this warm bed and the warmer occupant and head out into the November morning. “No thank you,” she said but slipped from the sheets anyway.

She dressed in warm fleece leggings and long sleeved shirt she found in the closet that Harry kept supplied with clothes in all their sizes. She forewent the thigh holster lying on the coffee table next to rumpled black pile that was yesterday’s clothes and only took the Beretta in her purse. The Machine insisted she wouldn’t need it but like hell she was going anywhere without it anymore. Not until Shaw physically pried it from her hand, an event that seemed less and less likely the healthier Root felt.

The Machine gave her an address and Root shivered slightly as she headed out the door into the brisk morning air. She loved fall and winter in New York. It could be colder than shit and snow was a pain in the ass but she’d take all of it any day over the muggy summer days of her childhood. Seasons were undervalued and the novelty of living in a city that experienced all four hadn’t yet worn off.

Being free to walk the streets as the early morning commute flared to life around her was a novelty as well, a new one and one hard won at that. She knew she should be grateful to be alive, grateful to Her that they’d all managed to make it out relatively unscarred, that she’d lived to see Shaw again, to wake up in her arms. Blinking away tears that suddenly prickled at her eyes, she shook her head at herself. Clearly she was overtired if she was going to start blubbering on the street.

She made the turns the Machine told her to as she apologized for her standoffishness, something that got her a few looks from the people who actually caught the words. “I know you were just trying to save us all, regardless of how it turned out,” she said, fighting the pain from the memory of the crushing despair of being alone in a cement prison and alone in the world in general. She had been blaming the Machine for something that none of them had control over: what Shaw would do to protect her.

“I thought I was good at finding weaknesses in others,” she said with a quiet laugh, grinning up at the street camera. “And somehow I missed that I was hers. That I _am_ hers.” She really didn’t ever want to be accused of arrogance again, not when she’d missed something this big. “At least I already knew she was mine.”

Tugging her coat tighter as the wind picked up, she crossed the street to find a grocery store and the Machine telling her she’d arrived. “Really?” she muttered, glaring at the security camera at the door. “There’s something _here_ that was worth dragging me from Shaw for?” But the Machine insisted and she walked through the glass doors where the Machine promptly went silent. “Are you fucking kidding.”

But she was there so she might as well pick up some things until the Machine decided to tell her what she was actually there for. Wishing she had grabbed a bigger purse and resigning herself to either carrying everything back on her right side or dealing with the subway like this, traffic too heavy to make a cab worth the effort, she grabbed a basket and shoved it down the aisles. More than a little of her was wishing she was still in bed with Shaw, maybe kissing her a bit more. So she wasn’t in the best of moods as she stared at different cereal brands. Her head popped up when she heard a familiar voice in the next aisle, presumably talking with one of the employees.

Her heart was racing, completely unprepared for this. She could just sneak out, he’d never know she’d been there, but the Machine had brought her here for a reason. “This isn’t the kind of thing you spring on someone,” she hissed but the Machine remained silent. How exactly do you accost a friend while they do their grocery shopping and announce that you’re in fact not dead?

She let Lionel trail along the back of the store, not sure how to announce her presence. Stepping out behind him, some thirty feet in between them, she called his name softly. He looked up, the kneejerk reaction of hearing one’s name, and looked around, down the aisle he stood in front of and then behind him. When he spotted her, he froze. She’d never seen him so still.

Walking towards him like he was a frightened horse that could bolt at any second, she called his name again. His mouth dropped open and he made a noise like he was trying to speak but his tongue wasn’t cooperating. “How,” he said and she tilted her head and smiled.

“She truly does work in mysterious ways.”

“But we buried you. I saw it, I watched the whole thing.” He didn’t stop staring at her, like she’d disappear if he did. Root reached a hand out to him so he could feel the solidity of her. He took it. “I was at your graveside.”

“I knew you liked me more than you wanted to admit, Lionel,” she teased and he pulled her into a fierce hug by his grip on her hand. Tensing in surprise, she patted his back a little and rocked back on her heels when he suddenly released her.

“Don’t get used to it, Cocoa Puffs,” he said gruffly, trying the subtly wipe at his face and mostly failing.

“But Lionel,” she said, all feigned innocence. “You’re still part of our team.”

“Our team? You’re all retired, aren’t you? I mean… wherever you were when everything went down and the machines died, we all thought you were done.”

“The Machine’s never done, Lionel. The numbers never stop coming. Only now they’re coming to Sameen and I and whatever other teams She’s created for Her service.” She had figured out why the Machine sent her there and her specifically. She was wise and great and all-seeing and sometimes an asshole. “If you want back in, you just have to say the word.”

“You stalked me down doing my grocery shopping to recruit me back into the madness? Not just a ‘oh hey, by the way, the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’? What happened to being friends?”

Root shifted uncomfortably under Lionel’s hurt gaze. “She sent me here, didn’t tell me why. She sent Harry to me too, I didn’t even go find him.”

Lionel gaped then scoffed. “Please tell me you at least found Shaw on your own.” She shrugged.

“She sent her to me too. But I would have gone to find her as soon as I was able.” He tilted his head in confusion and she pulled at the collar of the v neck until the healing red bullet hole was revealed. “I did actually get shot, Lionel,” she said, giving him a patronizing look. He frowned at her then looked back at the wound until Root let go and her shirt covered it again.

“I’m guessing Dr. Mayhem fixed you up?” he said, giving her a significant look. She winked and he rolled his eyes.

“Amongst others. But she’s the only one who might lose it if I don’t feed her so I should probably acquire breakfast foods. Would you like to join us, Lionel?” He looked wary but agreed. They did their shopping together while she answered his questions as simply and breezily as possible, not particularly wanting to get into specifics in so public a setting.

He drove them back to the safe house, the two of them sitting in traffic for far too long for the short journey, but she actually got a laugh out of him when she sang “Wide Open Spaces” as the Dixie Chicks played. Lionel helped her carry her bags up along with his own, taking in her damaged shoulder and weak grip without being told. She realized, as she got the door open, she probably should have told Shaw she was bringing back a guest.

“What the fuck’s with you sneaking out?” Shaw said as she came around the corner, still in only her bra and shorts. Lionel cleared his throat and turned around hastily. Shaw just rolled her eyes and walked closer. “I would have gone with you.”

“The Machine sent me. I wasn’t running off, I promise. Though you’d maybe deserve it if I did, all this hovering.” Root took off her scarf and wrapped it around Shaw’s neck, smiling at how ridiculous she looked.

“I won’t hover as long as you come back. You’re not healed yet,” Shaw muttered, turning away from what Root knew was a besotted expression on her face. “And I see you found someone. He why the Machine sent you?”

“Yeah, and hello to you too, Shaw,” Lionel said to the refrigerator as he shoved the cold bags of grocery inside. “Cocoa Puffs invited me, not you. But thanks for anyone letting me know that a friend wasn’t actually dead.”

“Not my game, Fusco,” Shaw said, digging through the bag. She pulled out a box of cereal and went to open it, jumping when Root smacked her hand away. “What the fuck.”

“I’m cooking,” Root said, pulling the package of bacon out from the other bag and holding it out tauntingly. “Got to keep up with my little carnivore.”

“I can eat both,” Shaw protested but her eyes never left the package. Root giggled, the sound bubbling up in her from somewhere deep. After the last month, she never expected to slip so easily into joy.

“And the French toast I’m making?”

“I’m an overachiever,” Shaw insisted but moved around to the other side to go through the other bags.

“Where’d you learn to cook?” Lionel asked Root and she smiled.

“It’s not rocket science,” Shaw told him through a mouthful of dough, having found the donut Root had bought her special from the bakery. Root just shook her head at the woman she loved and brushed the bit of crumbled glazing that had caught on her chin.

“The funny thing about small towns,” she said, plucking the rest of the donut out of Shaw’s hand and ignoring her indignant noise, “is that everyone believes your business is their business. And the retired woman next door had really nothing to do with her time besides feed the 10 year old neighbor kid with a sick mom and make sure she could feed herself.”

“I didn’t know your mom was sick,” he said quietly, staring at her. “I’m sorry.”

She smiled at him. “It’s all right. I was 14 when I contracted out my first hit. I would have been pretty sorry if I couldn’t even cook for myself.” She laughed out loud when his expression moved from sympathetic to somewhere between unimpressed and annoyed.

“Gimme back my donut if you’re just gonna talk and not feed me,” Shaw complained and tried to reach around Root to get it. Root backed up into her space, one hand wrapping around Shaw’s bare middle.

“Don’t even think about it,” Root warned, only about 20% joking. “Go get dressed and I’ll start.”

“Whatever, I’m dressed,” Shaw muttered but turned away anyway. “Don’t stare at my ass, Lionel.”

“Don’t get too big a head, it ain’t that great,” he shouted after her. She held up her middle finger without turning around in reply. “I would say that I don’t know how you deal with it but you’re worse than she is.”

“Unfortunately, my ass will never be that great,” Root said wistfully, an affected pout on her face as she watched Shaw walk away. Lionel choked and shook his head, muttering about letting himself get pulled back into this mess.

 

Lionel proved himself to be useful to them and Root finally understood what the appeal of having a detective on the team was to Finch and John. Finch probably could have hacked the NYPD’s servers easily enough (she’d done it before herself; the DoD, the cops ain’t) but that came without the added benefit of the badge and the intimate personal knowledge.

“You owe me,” he muttered as he shoved their most recent number into the car, handcuffs jangling and narrowly missing having his head slammed into the door frame. She smiled at him, tilting her head in a way that she knew disconcerted him.

“You say that like you don’t enjoy taking down attempted murderers, especially ones that plot to kill their wives so they can move in their pregnant mistresses.” She batted her eyes and he rolled his, slamming the door. He called over to his new partner and Root paused a moment to take in Dani Silva, still a few feet away.

“Is your wife with his?” Lionel asked, jerking his thumb back in the direction of a Mr. Patrick York. She gave him a look and he smirked like he won something.

“Let me check,” she said, voice breezy, and his smirk grew. “Everything good on your end, sweetie?” she said into her earpiece.

“Peachy,” Shaw said, annoyed. “She’s freaking out, I’m bored, and I didn’t even get to shoot anybody.”

“Poor thing,” she teased. “We’re all done here so you should be good to head out.”

“Fucking finally,” Shaw muttered. “I’m heading back to my place, I’m starting to forget what it looks like.”

“If that’s your place, is the safe house mine?” Root asked, twirling a strand of hair around her finger absently as she watched the blue and red lights fade as the cars whooped and headed up the road. She gave Lionel a little wave of her fingers as he got into his own unmarked car; she got a dismissive gesture in response and grinned.

“Probably,” Shaw said. Root could hear the soft clink of metal in the background that told her Shaw was packing up her rifle. “You stole it from Finch, just like you stole my sweatshirt the other day. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

“But it’s November, Sameen,” she complained, the wind picking up off the water as if on cue. She shivered and shifted, momentarily grateful it wasn’t snowing, thinking about how she’d have to put up her bike once it started.

“Then get your own sweatshirt,” Shaw commanded but it was lacking any heat.

“Or we could both forgo sweatshirts and just produce body heat,” she said with more than a dash of innuendo and then immediately regretted it, remembering their conversation. She opened her mouth, apology half out of it, but Shaw cut her off.

“You coming over?” she asked, voice low, the chatter on the street nearly blocking her out. Root’s breathing picked up as she held her helmet in her hands.

“Absolutely,” she said, not bothering to hide how affected she was. Shaw went silent after that and Root threw herself onto her bike, zooming out into traffic a little less recklessly than she normally would. It wouldn’t do to get in a wreck tonight of all nights.

She let herself into Shaw’s apartment, having made keys in secret about two weeks into her stay with Shaw so she could come and go as she pleased. Shaw knew, of course, but said nothing, even when she’d come home to an empty apartment. Space was something they both knew and needed but Shaw didn’t seem to mind, and in fact preferred, that Root had been staying close since her most recent brush with death.

“Did I beat you home?” she wondered aloud, considering kicking off her shoes at the door. It had taken her a while to get into the habit again, always ready to run at the slightest provocation. She felt capable now, especially with the Beretta at her waist and the switchblade in her pocket, but something still felt off.

Padding around the apartment, she saw Shaw’s bag over by the couch. She unzipped it to find her rifle and a few other pieces in it. So Shaw had been here.

“Sameen?” she called but there was no answer. Having the creeping feeling that her discomfort was vindicated, she drew her gun. Root turned the corner into the hallway, gun first. Noting it clear, she entered the bedroom the same way. She almost dropped the gun in surprise.

Shaw was on the ground, arms crossed behind her at the small of her back, ankles and knees together as her knees held her weight. Her back was ramrod straight and her eyes were closed. Root took in the slight quiver in Shaw’s shoulders and calves but couldn’t tell if it was strain of the stress position Shaw had assumed or the chill of the air as Shaw wore only her underwear.

“Oh,” she breathed as she set her gun down on the bed and Shaw opened her eyes.

“I never let them have this,” Shaw said and Root nodded, swallowing hard.

“Tell me what you need, baby,” she said, feeling her hands shake as she shrugged off her jacket. Shaw closed her eyes again, face tipped up a little.

“I need you to hit me.”

Root stood stock still and looked at her, looked at the tension running through her body, the strength in her arms and legs, the iron of her will, and felt almost overwhelmed with affection. It wasn’t the first time Shaw had asked to be at her mercy but it never stopped feeling so incredibly intimate.

“You know I need more than that, sweet girl,” she whispered. “How do you need it?”

“Hard. I want you to bruise me. I want to feel you in my bones and on my skin.” Shaw’s voice was raspy already, like she had worked herself up so much that her mouth had gone dry already. Root licked her lips in sympathy. “Use your hands, your nails, your teeth, any of it.”

“My knife? My belt?” she asked and Shaw hesitated a moment before shaking her head.

“Not tonight. Just you.”

Root pulled her knife out and tossed it down the hall with a clatter. Shaw opened her eyes again and Root held them as she walked forward, wearing her role like a second skin as she tipped Shaw’s head up with a single finger.

“And my words? Can I call you my beautiful girl, my darling?” Shaw didn’t say anything, just looked up at her, chest heaving in shallow breaths. “My gorgeous little pain slut.”

“Please,” Shaw said, the word sounding like it had been ripped from her.

“Don’t you hesitate for a second to tap out,” Root said, grabbing her chin roughly, losing the veneer of the disconnected dom for just a moment.

“Like you could make me,” Shaw said tonelessly but there was something like mischief in her eyes. Root pulled her fingers back and cracked Shaw across the face with the back of her hand. Shaw gasped and bent on instinct, righting herself a split second later.

“Good girl,” Root said and Shaw tipped her face up again, primed for another hit even as pink blossomed on her skin. “Even when you’re being rude, you still take it so well.”

Shaw flushed, her eyes glassy and her mouth open in heavy breaths. Root felt the twisted rush of arousal that came with Shaw biting back a moan when Root hit her again. Shaw’s eyes closed as her abdomen clenched with the strain of keeping herself upright. Seeing her Sameen like this, open and vulnerable and placing herself in Root’s hands…. There was no hotter sight in the world.

She tipped Shaw’s chin up again, drawing one black fingernail down the line of her throat to feel her swallow in anticipation and her breath come short. “Gorgeous,” she said again and Shaw just stared at her as her fingertips dipped gently into the hollow of her collarbone. Root held her gaze as those fingers travelled down and watched Shaw groan as she dug her nails into and up the sensitive skin between her breasts. Her other hand came down to flick Shaw’s nipple roughly and she reveled in Shaw’s gasped, “Shit.”

Leaving Shaw’s breasts alone, she walked around Shaw’s tight form and watched the muscles in her calves twitch. Taking mercy, she kicked her ankles apart with her tip of her heel, noting with interest the beautiful way Shaw sighed at the dull impact. She tugged on Shaw’s ponytail, wrapping the hair around her fist and pulling her back taut in an arch. Shaw muffled a whimper and Root caught the way her thighs clenched together.

“Are you trying to hide from me, sweetie?” she asked, voice girlish and mocking. “You think I don’t see you? You think I don’t see what this does to you? Sameen,” she chided gently as her grip tightened. “I know just how wet you get like this. And that’s why it’s only mine.”

“Yours,” Shaw gasped out, body trembling. Root felt the word down in her core, feeling the trickle of her own arousal between her legs. Releasing her grip on Shaw’s hair, she was pleased to see Shaw fight her way back to sitting straight. She was patient but Root wasn’t.

Reaching down to swat Shaw’s ass, Root murmured, “I want that where I can reach it. On the bed please. Clothing isn’t necessary.”

Shaw got to her feet gracefully, only a slight stumble telling Root how long she had held herself there waiting for Root to show up. Arousal and affection fought for space in her chest and she reached out to let her fingers trip gently over the skin of Shaw’s shoulders as she bent to remove her underwear. Shaw climbed on the bed and assumed a modified fetal position that placed her weight on her forearms and calves, baring her back and ass to Root’s touch and gaze. She ran her fingers down Shaw’s back just to watch her shiver then raked the same skin with her nails on the upstroke. Her groan muffled by the sheets, Shaw jerked but didn’t change her position at all.

“So well-behaved,” Root said, voice gentle and sweet. Shaw shook her head slightly, the sheets giving away the movement by sound. “Oh sweetheart. Am I being too nice to you? I know, I’m sorry. That’s not what you asked for, is it?” She brought her hand down hard on Shaw’s ass and watched her back try to bow away from the blow as Shaw fought her own body to stay where she was. Root ran her fingertips over the spot she’d hit, wondering if she could actually trace the outline of it. She struck again, much lighter and barely a flick of her fingers. Shaw’s toes curled where they peeked out under her body and Root smiled.

Her wrist flicked again and again, varying in speed and power and the time in between each strike. She dug her nails into Shaw’s heated flesh just to watch her throw her head back at the feeling.

“Have I bruised you yet?” Root wondered aloud and Shaw’s whole body shuddered. “Can you feel me in your bones? Or have I only gotten to your skin?” Shaw said nothing, made no noise, but her frame was wracked with shivers. “Sit up, please. I think I need your back for this and I’d really rather not accidentally hit your kidneys.” She gave a little giggle. “Blood’s only fun when it’s from my blade.”

Shaw sat up quickly, forearms pushing her up hard and almost toppling her over. Root caught and steadied her with gentle hands, leaning up to press her fully clothed body to Shaw’s bare one. “I want you to feel me,” she murmured into Shaw’s ear. “I want to leave my mark on you and hear you sob my name.”

“Make me,” Shaw spit out and Root grinned before sinking her teeth into Shaw’s shoulder, her moans like music to Root.

“Oh, baby girl,” she breathed against the spot where her bite mark still lay. “I intend to.”

She nipped her way along the back of Shaw’s neck, flinging Shaw’s hair out of the way as she moved. “Right here, I think,” she said, pressing a kiss against a spot a few inches from Shaw’s spine before mapping it out with her fingers. She felt the bones of Shaw’s ribs, the hard muscle of her back that let her move with strength and grace and protected her organs. Clenching her hand into a loose fist, Root drove it into Shaw’s back. It was more thud than sting, more whack than punch, but Shaw let out a gust of air anyway. Root gave her a few seconds to feel it before striking again and then again on the other side.

Slowly building up the pressure, knuckles sometimes leaving little blotches of blood vessels beneath them, Shaw bowed to the onslaught but didn’t say anything. She didn’t do more than gasp or groan and even those were few and far between.

Root stepped back with a sigh, one hand holding her chin, to look at the artwork she’d made of Shaw’s back. “Yes,” she said, pleased. “I like this look. When it bruises, it’ll look glorious.” She climbed up on the bed behind Shaw, slotting her chest up against Shaw’s back, knowing how the fabric of her shirt and slacks would rub against all the sensitive skin she’d turned scarlet on Shaw’s back.

Shaw only exhaled deeply with an edge that sounded like a whimper when Root wrapped an arm around her middle, shifting their positions so Shaw was forced up on her knees. Root’s other hand travelled up and down Shaw’s sides, tracing patterns and equations and words into skin that practically vibrated under her hands. She bit and sucked at Shaw’s shoulders and neck, Shaw willingly pliant in her arms. She’d never ever get used to how heady it felt to hold this beautiful, powerful killing machine in her arms and know that she was given this freely.

“Do you feel me in your bones?” she whispered and Shaw tilted her head back to let Root nip at the edge of her jaw.

“Yeah,” Shaw said, rough and distant. Root smirked against Shaw’s skin and moved her hand between Shaw’s legs, arousal washing her as Shaw cried out at her touch. She was slick between her thighs and her knees parted easily when Root shoved her own thigh between them. Shaw’s hips shifted and rolled against Root’s leg, not seeming to care about the rough fabric against her labia. Root touched Shaw’s clit with the edge of her nail and Shaw jerked in her arms.

“Shh,” Root hushed as she turned Shaw around and pushed her until she was on her back staring up at Root. She smiled down at Shaw, a sweet thing that was deliberately juxtaposed with the rake of Root’s nails down Shaw’s stomach. Shaw hissed and her chest jerked in an aborted reaction. Root touched at the raised red lines with gentle fingertips before digging in hard, leaving dents in Shaw’s skin as she gasped and the muscles of her shoulders and torso tensed.

Running soothing hands up Shaw’s body, avoiding her breasts with almost careless precision, Root massaged Shaw’s shoulders for a moment before digging her nails in there too. Shaw moaned, a soft thing that sounded torn from her as her mouth hung open with each heaving breath.

Root moved to straddle Shaw’s hips on the bed, not touching her but on her knees towering over Shaw instead. She looked at her handiwork, at Shaw’s pliant, willing body and the marks that she had left there for the first time in far too long. Shaw’s fingers flicked out and then clenched back into fists just outside the stretch of Root’s knees, just short of touching Root back. She grinned and then took both of Shaw’s nipples between her fingers and pinched hard. A stuttered cry and a bared neck was the reply she received. Twisting just to see what sounds she could coax out that way, she gasped herself when Shaw bucked up, her bare stomach hitting Root and shoving her thighs wider.

Shaw’s thrashing had ended with her eyes squeezed tight and her hands up around her head, one hand laying on the gun Root had set down on the bed when she came in. She reached over Shaw’s prone body, feeling one of Shaw’s hands coming up to ghost down her body gently, never truly touching, as she grabbed the gun. Sitting back on her haunches, she watched Shaw’s eyes follow the gun and then settle on Root’s own when she tipped it to touch the sight gently to her temple. “I don’t think we need this, do you?”

Pulling back from Shaw and climbing off the bed entirely, shoes shifting back into place from where they had been barely hanging on, she placed the gun on the desk in front of the monitors she’d purchased what felt like eons ago. Root ran one finger over the desk then turned back to Shaw with a grin.

“I’m going to need a little bit of audience participation here, sweetheart,” Root teased, walking her fingers up Shaw’s calves until she got to her knees, which she shoved up and out of her way. “I really, really want to make you come but I did make you certain promises.” Shaw just watched her silently, puffs of air escaping her parted lips. Root crawled between Shaw’s legs, sitting up and letting her elbows rest on Shaw’s knees. “Should we go through the checklist? Do you feel me on your skin?” Shaw was silent so Root drew her nails up the back of Shaw’s thighs, watching her mouth widen in a gasp. “You’ve got to work with me here, sweetie.”

“Yes,” Shaw bit out, looking into Root’s eyes. She smiled and leaned down to nip at Shaw’s skin as a reward.

“Did I bruise you? Mark you?”

“Yes,” Shaw said, voice catching when Root bit her again.

“Do you feel me in your bones?” she asked, mouth against Shaw’s inner thigh, hands resting just below Shaw’s ass as she shifted Shaw’s knees to hang over her shoulders.

“Yes,” Shaw snarled when Root bit her thigh, mouth wide and teeth leaving deep indents.

“So the only thing we have left,” Root said, moving lower and lower and leaving a kiss with every word, “is you sobbing my name.” She blew a hot breath over Shaw’s cunt, feeling her squirm and shake around her. “Screaming is a viable second choice.” And then she couldn’t speak because she was licking into Shaw, shoulders and rough hands the only thing holding Shaw back from clamping down on her with those powerful thighs. She sucked on Shaw’s clit; her blood sang and her heart pounded in response to Shaw’s cries and encouragement. Shoving her tongue in deep, Root felt Shaw clench and knew that she didn’t have long to draw this out. Pulling back, she held Shaw’s labia apart with two fingers so she could run her nail over Shaw’s clit again.

“Fuck. Please,” Shaw said and bit her lip, toes curling against Root’s hips.

“Please what, baby? What do you need?”

“Hurt me,” she gritted out, eyes closed like saying the words was painful. “Bite me, hit me, just make me come.”

“Of course,” Root said, voice saccharine but completely honest. Sucking Shaw’s clit back into her mouth, she dug her nails into the sensitive slick flesh of Shaw’s inner thighs and held on as Shaw came. Back bowing, mouth open in a silent scream, Shaw tensed and then collapsed, shivers rocking her cunt and thighs as she lay back against the bed.

Root watched her for a few minutes until the shaking had mostly subsided before kissing her way up Shaw’s bare body.

“That what you were looking for?” she teased but turned serious when she gently held Shaw’s chin until their eyes met. “You still here with me?”

“Absolutely,” Shaw said with a filthy smile, pulling Root down to kiss the answering one off her face. “Do something else for me?”

“Of course,” Root repeated, pressing herself close to Shaw’s body. Shaw lifted a hand to physically turn Root’s head to speak the words directly into Root’s left ear.

“Get yourself off for me,” she said, words gravelly and rough and enough to make Root breathe a moan against her.

“Here?” she asked, rolling her hips. Shaw held her back with one arm.

“No. I want to see you.” She pushed her hands up Root’s shirt until she got the message and pulled it off, throwing it towards the bathroom door. She groaned a little when Root pulled away to kick off the heels and slacks that made up Special Agent Augusta King’s usual uniform and shed them. Standing in just a matching pair of lace panties and a bralette, she twisted a piece of hair childishly.

“Over here?” she asked Shaw, wide-eyed and innocent. Shaw groaned again and threw her arm over her eyes.

“Just come here, you fucking tease.”

“I thought that was the point. Teasing.” She let out a little mewl of pleasure as she touched herself through her panties. Shaw sat up immediately, bare chest heaving.

“Come here,” she ordered again; Root held her bottom lip between her teeth as she grinned and hurried back to the bed. On her knees, Root rubbed at her neck and good shoulder.

“I think I strained something taking care of you. Doing anything else might aggravate it.”

Shaw raised her eyebrows at her, the devious smirk on her face making Root clench her thighs together. “You’re right. I’ve asked too much from you. You shouldn’t come tonight at all.” Root turned and let herself fall back onto the bed, landing right at Shaw’s side.

“I’m not exhausted quite yet. I can do this. For you,” she added, drawing gentle fingers over Shaw’s chest until she laid down again. Shaw rolled onto her side, propping her head up with one hand, her weight on her bent elbow.

“Show me how you do it, then. For me.” Shaw dipped one fingertip in her mouth then ran it down Root’s stomach. She whimpered. For all her playing and teasing, she had been almost as worked up as Shaw. She palmed her breast, rubbing at the nipple through the sheer bralette while her toes curled at the feeling of oversensitive skin against harsh lace. Like this, under Shaw’s gaze after so long without it, every touch was almost painful. “I didn’t say tease yourself,” Shaw murmured right into her left ear, rough and demanding, as Root turned her head away with another whine. “I said get yourself off.”

Root’s chest heaved as she tried to contain all the noises she wanted to make as her own hands trailed down her body, one sliding under her panties while the other played with the edge of them. “Sameen,” she whispered and Shaw kissed her once, just a quick press of lips to hers.

“Come on. Do it for me. Hard and fast. We’ll see who screams then.”

“Fuck,” Root whimpered but obediently slid her fingers towards her clit, jerking at the first touch. Her free hand went out to Shaw, clutching at her on instinct. Fingers sliding easily between her labia, she toyed with her own entrance, hips bucking and her entire body shaking.

“You already this close?” Shaw asked, smirking. Root looked into her eyes and almost wished she hadn’t as her heart fluttered under Shaw’s hot gaze.

“You’re just so beautiful when you hurt,” Root said, hand clamping down hard on Shaw’s elbow just to watch her gaze heat more. “Even more when you let me make you bleed.”

Shaw kissed her roughly, possessively, and then backed off. “You’re a twisted fuck, you know that?” she asked Root, still sharing her air. Root gave her a crooked grin in return, stealing another kiss.

“That’s how you like me.” Shaw just bit Root’s lip before shoving her hand off Shaw’s arm and down towards her waist.

“I think I like you better screaming for me.” Root curled her fingers, two of them slipping inside her, as Shaw bit at her ear and neck.

“Shaw,” she whined again. “Sameen.” She worked her fingers over and in herself, palm grinding against her clit as she spread her legs wide. Her eyes closed as she bucked her hips up, fingers working deeper. Root knew she was making all manner of moans, whines, and whimpers but she didn’t care and didn’t bother to hide them. It felt like it had been years since Shaw touched her. She realized a little belatedly that Shaw wasn’t even touching her yet and she was preemptively embarrassed of the noises she’d be making then.

Catching her clit in a rough grind, she cried out and thrashed, her head colliding with Shaw’s shoulder. Shaw caught her chin and Root opened her eyes, gaze fuzzy and out of focus as she chased her orgasm with Shaw’s name on her lips.

“Look at me,” Shaw said and Root obeyed, licking her lips as her fingers continuing driving her to an edge that threatened to tear her apart. She followed Shaw’s face when Shaw swung her leg over Root’s body, not touching her as she straddled her. Root could have arched her arm just a little to brush against Shaw’s core but didn’t; that wasn’t the game. “Look at me.” Shaw held Root’s chin with gentle fingers, reminding Root of how she held Shaw’s just before she struck her for the first time. She took in the broken capillaries on Shaw’s cheek and gave a full-body shudder that shoved her inches closer to the edge. “I want to see you when you come. I want to be right here when you come for me.”

“Sameen,” Root whispered, her body rocking. Shaw just leaned forward, one arm bracing her weight on the metal headboard. She could feel her orgasm approaching and wanted to shut her eyes but kept them open. Shaw wanted them open and so they would be.

“Just like that,” Shaw said. Root’s fingers worked furiously against her, every moment sending sparks to every nerve ending in her body, every brush of her clit wringing a pathetic little cry from her throat.

When she came, her back arched and her legs shook and her hands clawed out for Shaw’s body. She didn’t cry out Shaw’s name but she’d tried to. Making it as far as “Sam” before her voice gave out as the feeling of it all overtook her, Root petted at Shaw’s hair as Shaw collapsed on top of her. “Sameen,” she murmured and Shaw kissed her, deep and affectionately. Root couldn’t hold her head up anymore as wave after wave shook her while Shaw leaned over her and watched.

“I win,” Shaw said with a grin when Root opened her eyes again. She reached out with a finger to wipe away a tear that had leaked from Root’s eyes. “I made you sob for me.”

Root gestured at her body as Shaw rolled off. “This doesn’t feel like losing,” she protested, struggling to sit up to remove the bra and panties that were really starting to annoy as the endorphins faded.

“But this,” Shaw said, running a hand up Root’s bare body as she laid back down next to her, “definitely feels like winning.” Root wrinkled her nose at how cheesy it sounded but pulled Shaw down to kiss her before anyone could get disgruntled.

“Are we good?” she asked, nose to nose with Shaw. “Are you good?”

Shaw’s filthy smirk slid off her face and was replaced with something Root could only call soft. “I’m right here. I’m with you.”

“Good,” Root murmured before pulling Shaw down for another kiss. Shaw went willingly enough but fought Root’s petulant hold to sit up again. She stared down at Root unmoving, not meeting her eyes. Root wasn’t sure if she’d zoned out or, worse, been kicked out of reality again. “Sameen?” she asked cautiously.

Shaw still didn’t look her in the eye but reached out to draw a gentle finger around the still wickedly red mark of the bullet wound. Moving her finger up until it almost hit shoulder, Shaw drew the finger across the line of Root’s body, ending when she hit bicep.

“Do you know what this is?” Shaw asked, voice quiet. Root didn’t speak, was almost afraid to. “It’s your left subclavian artery. It transports blood from your heart to your arm, shoulder, muscles, and organs. It’s big. It’s important. And you almost took a bullet right through it. A few inches to the right, a few inches up, there’d be no saving you. No matter what kind of team the Machine put together, you’d have been gone.”

Root didn’t say anything. There was no comfort to be found there, no way to reassure Shaw that she was there with her, that she was fine. If they kept taking the numbers, if they kept up on their trajectory, one day they would both meet that end. She’d only delayed the inevitable and they both knew it. So instead she reached up to cover Shaw’s fingers with her own.

Shaw kissed her again and Root tried not to let her face show just how much it ached to know that they couldn’t have this forever. Forever didn’t exist for people like them. So they had to claim whatever moments came their way.

Laying down on her back and tugging the sheet off the floor to cover them with, Shaw broke the silence again. “I meant it. When I said it was yours. I’ve gotten it rough from people but not like that. I’ve had an actual dom maybe a handful of times. And nothing at all like I do with you.”

Root felt a heartfelt grin spread over her features as she turned on her side to look at Shaw through the dim. “So that first time? The first time you asked me to brutalize you like this, that was the first time you’d ever given that kind of trust to anyone?”

Shaw shifted and turned her face away. “Don’t make it a thing.”

“You made it a thing first,” Root pointed out. They lapsed into silence for a few moments before Root said, “Thank you.” Shaw didn’t answer, just rolled onto her side and shut her eyes.

 

Watching Shaw get dressed the next day was a treat. The mottled and flushed skin on her back had turned to bruise in the night. Root sat up in bed to watch Shaw throw her hair up into a tight ponytail, leaving the purple on her back open to Root’s view. Shaw bent over to tug her tight jeans up her legs and Root couldn’t resist anymore. Crawling over the bed on hands and knees, she reached out to run gentle fingers over the marks she left. Shaw gave her a look over her right shoulder but paused in her efforts to let Root explore.

“They look like wings,” Root said, pressing her mouth against the unmarked skin covering Shaw’s spine. “Beautiful and powerful.”

“Thought you didn’t believe in magic,” Shaw said, voice rough. Root hummed against Shaw and felt Shaw’s muscles shift under her skin.

“Some predators have wings. That’s not magic; that’s evolution. Some are built small and fierce, with sharp claws and sharper reflexes.”

“Animalistic,” Shaw said and the word had the slight lilt of question. Root kissed Shaw’s spine again, drawing her black nails up Shaw’s sides roughly.

“We both are,” Root reminded her. “Predators kill to live. You can’t say you’re not one.” Shaw nodded but remained tense. Root leaned up, pressing her bare chest to Shaw’s back as she let her arms hanging over Shaw’s shoulders. “We are what we are. Irrational. Imperfect. But there’s not a thing I’d change.” _About you_ , she thought, leaving it unspoken to keep Shaw from bolting on her. It was too close to feelings, to close to the words they couldn’t keep between them.

Shaw must have heard it anyway because she disengaged from Root’s hold to scoop her bra off the floor and went hunting for a shirt in the dresser.

She did, however, kiss Root again on her way out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! The porn arrived! I give it to you with the warning of DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. Don't backhand someone who isn't expecting it. Whiplash is a real thing and it _sucks_. Don't hit spine ever for any reason with any instrument. A bigger compact surface area like a loose fist bruises beauuuutifully and with less effort than an open hand but you really want to limit impact from both to places that can take it, such as butt and thighs. Repeated impact isn't great for your lungs or other organs. As always, play safely or at least risk-aware.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated myself for a solid week whether this read as dubcon-ish or not, which tells me warning for it was a good idea either way. Forewarned is forearmed. So this is that warning.
> 
> WARNING: possibly read as dubcon or undernegotiated kink

“What did you drag me out here for?” Shaw grumbled, shoving her hands down into her pockets, Bear’s leash wrapped around her elbow. She hadn’t been pleased by the prospect of a walk in late November, even though Root told her there was a surprise at the end. In fact, that only seemed to annoy her worse. Root just grinned up at the tall building they stood in front of.

“I told you. It’s a surprise. But I think you’ll like it.”

Shaw glared but didn’t speak as Root held the front door open for her. The doorman looked up when she walked in and looked at Bear and owner with distaste. Shaw opened her mouth to say something when Root chirped, “Good morning,” at him and dragged Shaw towards the elevator.

“Good morning, Ms. Hopper,” he said a little bemused as she pulled Shaw on the elevator and used a key to head to the penthouse.

“Do we have a mission?” Shaw asked quietly, even though they were alone. Root smiled at her, still holding Shaw’s gloved hand in hers.

“Of sorts,” she said just to watch Shaw’s brow furrow in suspicion. “You really should trust me, you know.”

“I’d trust you more if I was armed.”

Root blinked at her. “Are you not carrying?”

Shaw looked offended. “I’ve got my .380 and my 9mil but that hardly counts as armed.” Root laughed but didn’t move any closer. She knew any sudden movements would draw attention to their joined hands and she wasn’t ready to give up that contact. Not yet.

The elevator doors dinged and opened in a graceful slide to a hallway that had only three doors, one of them leading down to the emergency exit. Shaw followed Root as she tugged her towards the door on the left, shaking her hand out of Root’s grip when they hit the door. Root pulled out the key with a flourish and held it out to Shaw.

“Care to do the honors?” she asked, smile bright. Shaw took it from her cautiously and put it in the door. It swung open to reveal a modern apartment, white tile floors leading to an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. Shaw took a few steps in and Root shut the door behind her, practically bouncing with excitement.

“What is this place?” Shaw asked, looking at the sleek white cabinets of the kitchen and the dove grey couch that faced a huge wall-mounted TV directly across the wide space from cracked double doors. Next to the couch stood a deep purple armchair that Root was particularly in love with. Bear ran over to a bed for him over by a desk that faced the windows, three black-screened monitors arranged on its slate surface. He sat down on it, tongue lolling out. Root grinned and then looked back at Shaw.

“Mine,” Root said simply, walking over to the windows to look out at the city. She turned when she got there, looking back at Shaw. Shaw was standing there looking around with her eyebrows raised.

“Never figured you for ostentatious,” Shaw said and Root gave her a scolding look.

“It was a gift.”

Shaw’s eyebrows went higher. “From who?”

“The Machine, of course,” Root replied, one hand running along the back of the couch as she approached Shaw again. “I spent time as the executive assistant of a reclusive, paranoid billionaire. He wanted something designed to his specifications for security and so I made sure to get it for him. Of course, he didn’t actually exist. At the time, it was fun to play around as I got closer to the tech they had running their design program at the time. But I looked it up a few weeks ago and they were so afraid of this unknown billionaire that they built it exactly to my design and left it empty. I had to buy it in his name and then go through the whole song and dance of getting the title changed over. It wasn’t quite ready to show you.”

“And now?” Shaw asked, still taking in the surroundings. Her eyes lingering on the barely visible outline of their own private emergency exit built into the wall, Root smiled at how Shaw seemed to relax a little more with every passing minute.

“Now I’ve got keys made,” she said, indicating a key chain on the kitchen island. Shaw’s shoulders tensed again and Root frowned a little. “Now I’ve got a bit of furniture and some kitchen supplies. Now it’s ready for occupants. 6 comfortably, more if necessary. But for now, I’m really only hoping for two.” She caught Shaw’s eye and matched her solemn expression.

“You’re asking for a lot here,” Shaw said and Root frowned.

“I’m asking to continue the arrangement we’ve had for the last few months, just somewhere with more space. There’s no more attachment here than there is at your place.”

“Of course there is,” Shaw snapped and Root felt her chest tightening as she braced herself for a fight. “This isn’t something that we fell into by circumstance or for safety. You chose this, designed it. You invited me here and invited me to, what, move in with you? Make some sort of commitment?”

“Sorry if I thought we were past the part where we both pretend that this doesn’t mean anything. Pretty sure that ended the night that double suicide was on the table,” Root said, fury only barely leaking into her voice as she fought to keep her breathing steady. “I’m not asking you to give up anything here. You need your space. I need mine. It’s bigger here, it’s safer here, and it’s the same damn thing we’ve been doing for months. But if you’re gonna cut and run now like a coward, I guess I should be grateful that you at least told me to my face.”

“What did you call me?” Shaw asked, tone dangerous. Root tipped her chin up and looked down at Shaw.

“You fucking heard me.”

They just watched each other, neither moving other than the heaving of their chests. Root took in every inch of Shaw’s mutinous expression, the snarl threatening on her lip, and met them with her own most implacable. Shaw looked away first but it was a hollow victory as she stormed back towards the door. Something too close to guilt and as horribly familiar as despair washed through Root.

“Sameen, wait,” she called and Shaw stopped but didn’t turn. Root closed the space between them in a few steps. She grabbed Shaw’s hand, placing in it something she pulled out of her pocket. It was her set of keys to Shaw’s place. “I shouldn’t have called you that. I shouldn’t have asked more than you were willing to give. I’m sorry.”

Shaw stared down at the keys in her palm. “You’re sorry?” she asked, voice strained. Root swallowed.

“It’s fucked up, the way I’ve been treating you like I know how you feel better than you do. I don’t blame you if you want me out of your life or limited only to missions. I’m sorry.”

The keys jangled when they hit the floor suddenly and Root jumped. She blamed that for how off-guard she found herself when Shaw’s hands gripped her collar and pulled her down to press their lips together. Reminded fleetingly of that heart-stopping, terrifying moment when Shaw had sacrificed herself for her, she clutched at Shaw, any part of her she could hold on to. Her back hit the wall with nothing like gentleness and air huffed out of her; Shaw took advantage and kissed her deeper. Root tried to push Shaw’s jacket off her shoulders but failed to do anything more than hold on to Shaw’s shoulders as she felt Shaw’s mouth on her for the first time in far too long.

Root didn’t know what this meant, any of it. But she knew herself well enough to know that this had been Shaw’s game from the day Root realized that her own flirting was more real than fun. If this was how Shaw wanted this to go down, Root would happily oblige.

Shaw pulled back to shuck her jacket off and pushed and pulled Root’s off her too. Root opened her mouth but Shaw kissed her again. “Just. Stop. Fucking. Talking,” Shaw growled against her lips and Root acquiesced, forgoing words in favor of tugging Shaw closer again. She put her hands on Shaw’s hips, sliding fingertips under the fabric to press against skin. Shaw met that gentle touch with a quick bite to the underside of Root’s jaw that had her gasping and digging her fingers into Shaw’s hips. Clawing at the button of Root’s jeans, Shaw tugged the zipper down and shoved her hand between Root’s legs. Root bit her lip to keep herself from crying out but her eyes watered as her head collided with the wall behind her. Shaw’s fingers played with the edge of her panties for just a second before she moved the fabric aside to get where she wanted.

Root couldn’t help but gasp as Shaw’s fingers entered her roughly. She clawed at Shaw’s shoulders as if she was trying to climb away from the sensation that bordered on pain. Shaw’s fingers dragged within her and she shook, knees weak and thoughts fuzzy as she was held up against the wall by Shaw’s body. There was nothing gentle about this; it was rough and brutal and Root felt like she was going to pass out with how turned on she was. Shaw moved her thumb against Root’s clit and she clamped her lips together to prevent the whimper that rose in her throat from escaping.

She couldn’t stop her shaking, however. Her toes curled and her arms quivered and she let Shaw do what she wanted with her, throwing her head back to let Shaw take what she wanted. Shaw bit and sucked at her neck and jaw, fingers still moving harshly. Even breathing hurt as her chest heaved against Shaw’s, one hand on Root’s hip pressing her harder back into the wall. She sunk her nails into Shaw’s neck and scalp, giving back some of delicious pain that was sending her higher and higher. Shaw’s fingers continued shallowly thrusting, the movement of her wrist too limited by Root’s pants to give her the depth or pressure she wanted. Root found herself wishing a little nonsensically that she could run in the bedroom and change into a skirt so Shaw could have her against this wall the easy way.

Staying silent the entire time, Root forbade herself from begging even as she could feel the words on her tongue. She would weather this, letting Shaw take what she wanted, have her as she wanted. But Root would not let Shaw see the weakness in her, the utter desperation she felt when Shaw was near.

“You fucking martyr,” Shaw hissed as she pulled out of Root. Root opened her mouth in a choked off gasp at the feeling of Shaw’s barely-slick fingers dragging out of her. She didn’t move as Shaw clawed at her jeans and panties, shoving them both down her hips before pressing herself back up against and into Root’s body. Root shook and met Shaw’s thrusts, spreading her legs as far as was possible with fabric bunched around her knees. Shaw didn’t seem to mind as she pressed her fingers deeper and her thumb against Root’s clit. Root tilted her head back and focused on her heaving breaths as Shaw spread her fingers wide within her.

When Shaw leaned up to sink her teeth into Root’s neck, Root threw an arm over Shaw’s shoulder and used it to keep her close as Root came on a particularly vicious twist of Shaw’s fingers. She hadn’t even regained her head or her legs when she used that grip to drag Shaw to the ground. Pulling her own pants back up, she followed Shaw down. Root fumbled at the button of Shaw’s pants, tugging them down her legs and taking Shaw’s boots with her. If this was the last time she and Shaw were together like this, holding this fragile thing that looked too much like love between them, then she would give it her all.

She pressed kisses to every inch of Shaw she could reach, gentle where Shaw had been rough. Shaw’s head thunked back against the floor but she didn’t say anything, didn’t urge Root to go faster or harder. Root moved up her body, hands caressing everywhere her mouth didn’t reach.

Root felt something like anguish well up in her chest like a weight when she kissed Shaw’s knees and then her inner thighs and then swung up, unsure and hesitant, to kiss Shaw’s lips. But Shaw blossomed under her, meeting her kiss with the same gentleness Root gave to her, opening her mouth to her. It was like Shaw had put all the fight she had into fucking Root and now all that was left was the sweetness she tried to hide. Root just wanted to keep kissing her for hours, to just stay like that forever, especially if it meant Shaw didn’t walk out that door again.

“Root,” Shaw murmured against her lips and Root’s chest heaved as she tried to fight back all the emotions that welled up at hearing her name on that tongue in that tone.

“Shaw,” Root whispered back. She pulled away to get a better look at Shaw’s face, to read it better. Shaw looked… vulnerable, open in a way that they both knew she hated, almost broken.

“Please,” Shaw said, eyes wide and imploring. It was both the same as the look she’d given Root when asking to help John and yet wildly different. That had been manipulation, transparent and weak. This was something else, something honest. Root wondered if Shaw was even more frightened of it than she was.

“OK,” Root said. “OK.” She moved back down Shaw’s body, settling between her legs. It wasn’t comfortable in the slightest, laying on her belly on hardwood floors while her neck protested being used at such an angle. She considered grabbing a pillow off the couch a few steps away but discarded it as the thought of taking her hands off Shaw right now pulled at her. So she licked at Shaw, not teasing but slowly, and tried her best to ignore the discomfort in the rest of her body as her girl lay under her hands.

Shaw shifted and sighed with every trail Root’s tongue left over her, one arm draped over her eyes. She didn’t give much reaction, nothing vocal and only the slightest indications through the physical. Occasionally angling her hips up a bit more was as much involvement as Shaw gave, uncharacteristically passive. She inhaled sharply when Root sucked on her clit but had seemed to have just decided to forgo reactions. When she came, it was with a shudder that shook her bent knees and her core under Root’s hand and left her sucking air in measured breath as she lay back against the floor.

Root shoved herself back from Shaw, collapsing back. She sat up with her back against the wall, feeling shaky and sweaty and eager to get these clothes off. Shaw lay flat on her back staring at the ceiling. She sat up slowly, shirt back falling down to barely cover her hips. Root kicked Shaw’s pants closer to her; Shaw sat up and pulled them on, ignoring the underwear that fell to the wayside. As Shaw grabbed for something behind her, Root closed her eyes and breathed through her nose. She wasn’t sure what came next; the anxiety of it all was new and horrible and a sick weight in her chest. Feeling Shaw’s touch on her hand, she opened her eyes again. Shaw pried her fingers apart and placed the set of keys in Root’s open hand. Root’s eyes snapped up to Shaw’s face, searching her solemn expression for anything that might clue her in here.

“You do,” Shaw said and Root just blinked. “You do know how I feel better than I do. I can’t…” She trailed off and Root just waited, watching, for her to continue. “Look, I can’t do any of this. The whole relationship thing. It’s not- It’s never been possible for me. I was OK with that. But it’s not fair to you.”

“What do you consider it then?” Root asked quietly. Shaw’s brow furrowed in confusion. “This, whatever we have, whatever these last few months have been. What do you consider it?”

Shaw was silent for a moment before shrugging and looking away. “I don’t know.”

“I can’t tell you how you feel, Sameen. I can only tell you what I see from you. I think you’ve convinced yourself that a lot of things are impossible for you, whether or not they are. I think you’ve convinced yourself that you’re somehow victimizing me for not measuring up to some rom-com ideal of what I should want. I want you, exactly as you are. I don’t need anything else from you. I don’t want anything you wouldn’t willingly give.”

Shaw shook her head, still not meeting Root’s eye. “It’s not that easy.”

“None of this is easy,” Root reminded her. “We took on an evil ASI and the army behind it and won. You were tortured for months. I took a bullet a few inches from my heart. John _died_. And now we’re here doing whatever the hell it is we’re doing. That’s enough. And I’m grateful for it.”

Shaw nodded, finally turning back to Root. She reached out a hand and slowly cupped Root’s face to bring her closer, pressing their lips together almost gently. Then she stood up and started pulling on her boots and jacket. Root didn’t move, just watched her. Shaw moved towards the door then stopped, correcting her course to take her by the island in the kitchen. She plucked the new set of keys Root had made for her, complete with a fire emoji keychain, and looked back at Root as she put them in her pocket. Then she walked out the door, closing it quietly behind her with a click.

Root looked at Bear laying in his bed. He looked at her with sad eyes and she attempted a smile. “Yeah, buddy. Me too.”

She was surprised a few hours later when she heard a key in the lock, reaching automatically for the submachine gun she’d placed under the couch. Bear popped up from where he sat at the foot of the armchair and ran over to the door, waiting patiently. Shaw opened the door and he butted his head against her until she scratched between his ears. Root watched her silently as she approached, setting down the gun and her book and waiting for Shaw to say something.

Shaw didn’t speak, just pulled Root in to kiss her. Root tried not to read anything in it, not wanting to get her hopes up that Shaw’s kiss meant more than just a kiss. She pulled back to look at Shaw’s face. Shaw met her eyes and nodded. Root smiled; it wasn’t a bright grin or even a teasing one. It was a fragile small thing filled with hope.

“Welcome home,” she said softly and Shaw kissed her again.

 

Root couldn’t breathe.

Her eyes rolled wildly, barely taking in the blurred faces of the paramedics around her, one attempting to tape down a sheet of plastic over the hole in her chest. She felt blood in her throat and bubbling out of her lips.

“Tell her,” she begged, gagging and choking while hands tried to hold her down. “If she’s a shape, she’s a straight line. A perfect…” She trailed off as her body heaved up more blood and she fought to draw breath. “A perfect arrow, going on forever.”

“Shh, don’t try to talk,” a female voice said and an oxygen mask descended on her. Root fought her off, pushing it away with a shaking hand.

“Tell her. She thinks she’s broken but she never will be. Never. Tell her. I’m _dying_. You owe me this!” Those were the only words she managed to spit out before the pain became too much, her throat and lungs too filled with blood to speak. She was dying, suffocating, drowning in her own blood. If her God was there with her, she didn’t feel or hear Her. She could only hope that Shaw would get them, her last words.

Root woke up gasping, attempting to draw in deep breaths to clear the memory of blood from her lungs. She wasn’t choking anymore, she knew, but she coughed and gagged and sputtered against the sheet on her bed, hoping it wouldn’t be spattered in red when she pulled her mouth away.

“The fuck?” a voice asked groggily before the lamp switched on and a hand found Root’s back. “Hey. You all right?”

Root swallowed hard, shivering like she was freezing. She couldn’t shake away the image of that ambulance, the pain of the bullet still inside her. “Did She tell you?” she gasped out. Shaw shook her head and handed Root the bottle of water on her bedside table. It was tepid but Root drank the whole thing down, swallowing against the taste of blood still in her mouth. “Did She tell you?” she repeated.

“Did who tell me what? What the hell happened?”

“When I was shot, I asked the Machine to tell you something. Schrodinger. What kind of shape you would be. Did she tell you?”

Shaw nodded, movements jerky and numb. “Yeah. Uh, an arrow. A straight line.”

Root collapsed back onto the bed, focusing on her breathing. So it had been a memory and not a dream. She hadn’t been alone then. Even if she hadn’t survived, Shaw would have had her last words. “Thank you,” she mumbled and searched for Shaw’s hand with her own.

“You are, you know,” she said once she found it. “A straight line. The simplest perfection, the foundation of everything.”

“I thought I was noise in the system,” Shaw said, the light clicking off behind her. Root opened her eyes but could see nothing in the dark.

“You and I are irrelevant in the purest sense. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not perfect.”

The sheets rustled as Shaw shifted. “I’ve got a bit too much blood on my hands to be perfect.”

Root shook her head. “It’s part of what makes you perfect. How could I ever bear to touch a masterpiece like you if you weren’t as bloody as I am? You are life and death, creation and destruction.”

Shaw was silent for a few moments before saying, “Save that for your god.”

“You come first,” Root said.

Shaw didn’t answer and neither of them slept again.

 

“You cannot be complaining about an international relevant number, Sameen,” Root said, tossing clothes in a suitcase mostly haphazardly and zipping up a plastic bag with a few bottles of nearly identical shades of black nail polish.

“Fucking watch me,” Shaw muttered, taking out her own clothes with a little more aggression than was technically needed. “It’s fucking December and She’s sending us to the fucking Alps. I’m gonna freeze my tits off.”

“That would be a crime against humanity,” Root agreed earnestly but cracked a smile when Shaw glared at her. “Come on. You get to shoot some bad guys, maybe blow something up. It’s basically early Christmas!”

“Can’t the Machine find a relevant number in, oh I don’t know. New Zealand! It’s summer in New Zealand right now.” Root rolled her eyes with her back turned to Shaw so she couldn’t see. Her assassin, an actual lethal weapon in her own right, was whining about the cold. “Or hell, even here! It hasn’t even started snowing yet.” Root glanced out the window then looked back at Shaw. “Hey, I said yet.”

“You’ve got to start looking on the bright side, Sameen. Private flight, complimentary booze, all the comforts a resort town like Bad Gastein can offer, and a chance for you to take out some terrorists like the good old days. And then maybe when the gun smoke clears, we can find a way to heat up.” She paired this with a long gaze along the edges and angles of Shaw’s body and came up to rest on her pout.

“No amount of sex can make me forget that it’s 80 billion degrees below zero,” Shaw declared but placed her clothes in the suitcase with a little more gentleness than she’d taken them from the drawer with. Root considered that a win.

Shaw four tequila shots in at 80,000 feet was also a win. She was as relaxed as Root had seen her since the whole thing with Samaritan started and she loved every second of it. Root passed her a bottle of water, which Shaw eyed before taking and drinking half of it in one go.

“You’re in a good mood,” Root commented, head propped up on one hand. Shaw gave her a look and tossed the bottle back at her.

“Quality normally does that for me.”

Root nodded. “And the grenade launcher She recommended we pack?” Shaw grinned.

“That normally does it for me too.”

The good mood faded when they stepped out of the private airport into the biting wind. “Fucking fuck,” Shaw muttered, pulling her coat tighter against her. “Why would you live somewhere it gets this damn cold?”

“Never figured you for a whiner, Sameen,” Root teased and Shaw glared from underneath her thick black hat. Her coat collar came up almost to her ears and her scarf covered the bottom half of her face so all Root could see was a small sliver of pissed off assassin.

“Didn’t you grow up in Texas? Aren’t Southerners supposed to be freaked out by snow?” Root wasn’t sure if Shaw’s voice was raised because the scarf muffled her or she was quickly approaching a boiling point. She smiled regardless.

“Texas summers are why I hate heat. Give me cold any day of the week,” she said, pairing it with a sunny grin as she dragged along their suitcase. “Come on, Mrs. Rathaway. You don’t want anyone thinking our cover is suspicious because you’re a grump.”

“Being married to you would make me a grump so there’s nothing suspicious there,” she muttered and Root just leaned close, linking arms with her.

“Even if I know so many tricks to heat you up?” Root asked, teasing tilt to her head.

“Especially then.”

The hotel was nice but then Root didn’t travel any other way. Scamming, stealing, and murdering your way into being a multimillionaire by 18 gave one a taste for the finer things. When it came to sleeping arrangements, Root saw no problem with spoiling herself when given the opportunity to.

Throwing herself back on the bed, she closed her eyes and took in the Machine’s constant flow of information about the group they were there to stop. A group sounded fun. Six different numbers. It was the most intense mission She had given them on their own and it was even relevant. Her grin got more pronounced as she listened to the Machine inform her of the location of a few pounds of C4 hidden in an empty tanker that sat on the less-used track of the railway. Root was so focused on taking in the information and turning it into a plan that she didn’t realize for a few seconds that Shaw was talking to her.

“What?” she asked, opening her eyes and sitting up. Shaw scowled.

“I said, if this palace you’ve booked us into doesn’t serve a decent schnitzel, I’m burning the whole fucking place down.”

Root smiled and patted the bed next to her. Shaw looked at her suspiciously but sat. “What if I told you that we’d have to skip dinner to make time to blow some white supremacists to hell?” The suspicious look remained.

“You talking killing again?”

Shrugging, Root said, “I wasn’t planning on it. But these fucks plan to blow up a resort filled with innocents and blame it on refugees. So if some die in the process of stopping that, I won’t lose sleep. Will you?”

“You’ve gotten cold again,” Shaw commented but she was grinning a little recklessly. “It’s not a bad look.” Root bit her lip when she smiled but when she pulled Shaw down to kiss her, Shaw went easily.

 

Shaw had been less easy to drag outside, even with some heavy artillery in the suitcase she dragged across cobblestone streets behind her. Root had tried to convince her that a sleigh ride would be fun and cement their cover as a couple celebrating an anniversary but Shaw had shut her down hard.

“It’s 13 motherfucking degrees,” Shaw informed her. “The only thing I really want to do is take out some terrorists and get the hell back inside.”

The locals had a higher tolerance for the cold if the busyness of the market was anything to go by. Root dragged Shaw in shop after shop, appeasing her with little morsels of Christmas chocolates, meats, and cheeses. “I hope that makes up for having to put off dinner until a bit later,” Root said as the afternoon took on more of a chill as evening rolled in.

“It’s OK. I know some people I can take my aggression out on.” Root bit her lip at Shaw’s vicious grin, pressing her thighs together. Then she noticed a reflection on the glass behind Shaw’s head and gave a filthy smile of her own. She pushed Shaw back and into a small alleyway where the overlapping roofs kept out most of the snow.

“We’ve got a tail,” Root murmured into Shaw’s ear before nosing at the little patch of skin on Shaw’s neck not covered by her scarf. Shaw slid her hands up Root’s thighs, over her ass, and under her thick jacket to grip the guns Root had in the small of her back. “It’s too public, too many civilians. Don’t shoot unless he raises his weapon.”

“I know the ROE, Root. But if he’s one of our numbers, there’s probably a reason he’s following us. Think our cover’s blown?” Root giggled and pressed Shaw tighter against the wall.

“Our cover’s blown, he’s homophobic, or you’re the first person he’s seen who shares some the physical attributes of the people he’s trying to frame?”

Shaw swore vehemently and tugged Root in closer as she readjusted her grip on the guns. “Can I please shoot him?”

“In time, sweetie. Let’s see if we can lose him first.”

 

They lost him rather easily then waited for him to circle back around after taking out his crew.

No one died during their theft and safe detonation of the C4. Root wasn’t disappointed. She really wasn’t. That the majority of the bastards they took down would need months of physical therapy to walk again appeased some of the sick hatred in her heart that had crept back in, slowly but surely, since losing Shaw. It had only gotten worse since her own near-death experience.

The only part of it that really mattered, though, was the way Shaw had grinned at her as they slipped back into their hotel room unseen, both covered in soot and grease and melting snow. She smelled sickly sweet, like burning rubber mixed with the perfume she dabbed on before heading downstairs. Shaw shed her wet coat, cheeks pink and wind chapped. Root couldn’t help but grin when Shaw came over to tug her own off.

“What a lovely anniversary,” Root teased, drawing one finger down Shaw’s arm until she hit the wrist and the skin that bared with it. “Do I get to warm you up now?”

“I think we’ve already managed to get hot today, don’t you think?” Shaw asked, tone dark with promise as she pulled her shirt over her head in what was clearly an invitation. Root bit her lip and watched the twist of Shaw’s torso as she walked to the bed, shoving her pants down her legs as she did. “Well?” she asked, expectantly.

Root strutted over to her suitcase, flipping open one of the smaller pockets and pulling out a few cylindrical objects. “You get your grenade launcher. I get this.”

“I think you mean _I_ get that,” Shaw corrected, laying down on her back. She was the picture of eager masochism and Root smiled sweetly as she approached Shaw with a predator’s stalking gait, a toy in each hand.

“You’re right. My mistake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about that fade-to-black. I could be convinced to finish it as a sort of coda but for now, this is where it is. And an additional note for the first scene, omfg don't fuck people dry. It hurts like a motherfucker and can cause cuts and tears and infection is no fun.


	7. Chapter 7

Root was sitting at her desk overlooking the pre-dawn city skyline with her computer and a cup of tea. Shaw made fun of her for it but she’d gotten into the habit of the stuff as part of a few different identities and somehow had ended up amassing an entire cabinet of tea leaves. She smiled over her cup as Shaw padded out bleary-eyed to head straight for the coffee maker.

“Morning, sweetie,” she chirped and Shaw turned one glaring eye on her.

“No,” Shaw said and Root bit back a laugh. Of all the things Sameen Shaw was, a morning person was not among them. And yet, she was awake at 5:30 because there was only so many years of limited sleep a body could take before it started refusing to let you have more. Root herself figured exhaustion was more a lifestyle than a temporary state of being.

She watched Shaw blink out at the grey sky on the other side of the glass wall, sipping at the coffee that Root knew had to be burning her tongue and soft palate. Waking Sameen up on anything other than adrenaline-rushed high alert was a slow process; it was best that she was given her own time. So Root went back to her favorite hobby: stealing money from cartels to fund certain pet charities. The Machine spoke occasionally, directing her towards better choices for both the theft and the deposits. She was so engrossed, it took her a moment to realize Shaw had spoken.

“Hmm?” she asked, looking up. She blinked when she found Shaw sitting on the floor a few feet from her, Bear’s head on her lap. Two decades of paranoia had apparently taken a break enough to let Shaw get close undetected; she didn’t know what it said about her that the very thought made her heart flutter with warmth.

“What’s the Eye in the Sky got you working on so early?” Shaw asked and Root shrugged casually, angling her computer towards Shaw even as she knew Shaw wouldn’t intuitively get it.

“Nothing, really. This is just busywork. What about you? Any plans for today?”

Shaw took another big drink of her coffee and Bear looked up at them both with sad eyes. “Take Bear out. Maybe go bother Fusco. He’s been left alone for far too long, he’s probably missing me.” She sat her cup down on the hardwood and leaned back on her hands, still looking out the window. “Looks like it’s gonna snow.”

Root glanced outside and nodded. “Are sure you want to take Bear out in it?” she teased. “What if your tits freeze off?” Shaw glared.

“Bear’s worth it,” was all she said and Root bit back a grin.

A shrill noise pierced the quiet and Shaw turned her glare in the direction of the master bedroom. “Who the fuck is calling me before 6am? If it’s Finch, I’m kicking his ass.” She moved to get to her feet and Bear moved too, following her as she stomped into the bedroom. “What?” she demanded, leaning against the frame of the door. Root watched her with a smile until the annoyance on Shaw’s face turned quickly to concern. Standing up to go to her, Root gestured at Shaw and Shaw shook her head vehemently, turning away a little.

“Slow down, kid. What’s wrong?” Root knew her confusion at the word ‘kid’ had caught Shaw’s attention but she waved Root away. “Do you need me to do something?” Root couldn’t hear the words but at this distance, she could hear a voice should could only describe as young, desperate, and heartsick. “On my way, Gen. Hang tight.”

Root waited patiently in the doorway as Shaw turned back around and started throwing on clothes, finishing it all off with a heavy sweatshirt of hers that Root enjoyed snuggling into at times. “Going somewhere?” she asked, trying not to let annoyance at Shaw’s silent treatment into her voice. Shaw’s head popped up from pulling on her shoes, eyebrows raised in a question.

“Oh, fuck, right,” she said and Root waited for more. “That was Gen. One of our numbers from a few years ago. Right before you kidnapped me actually. Kid was like ten and smart as hell but alone and Finch put her up in this fancy boarding school upstate. I told her to call me if she needed something. This is only the second time she has.”

Root nodded and went to trade her own pajama pants for jeans. “So we’re heading upstate?” she asked, looking for shoes that were actually made to withstand weather. She turned with them in her hand to find Shaw staring at her.

“You want to go? You don’t even know this kid.”

Root raised an eyebrow at her. “You cared enough to give this kid your number and drop everything when she called. Of course I’m going to help her.” She bit her lip in a sudden fit of anxiety. “Unless you don’t want me to go.”

But Shaw was already shaking her head. “No, let’s go. We can bring Bear, he can get some time outside the city. But,” she said, leveling the mittens in her hand at Root, “I’m driving and you don’t touch my radio.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetie,” Root said breezily as she finished pulling on her clothes and Shaw walked out with Bear’s harness in her fist.

 

The two-hour drive up to Millbrook wasn’t bad, even if Shaw slapped her hands away from the radio with every attempt. Traffic was almost non-existent heading out of the city at that hour, the snow threatened but held off, and Root was dealing with residual car-related trauma decently enough, even if her shoulder ached in sympathy every time she so much as glanced at the driver’s seat.

“So tell me about this Gen,” Root said and Shaw gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

“What about her?”

“I don’t know. Anything. How old is she? Who was after her?” Shaw shrugged.

“She’s, fuck, like 13 now? 14? Little punk decided that she’d take after her KGB grandfather and spy on everyone in her building. Including the Bratva and the dirty cops who had made a deal with them.” Root huffed a laugh.

“I’m impressed.”

“Yeah, she was pretty impressed with herself too up until she got kidnapped, gassed out, and shot at. Taking on HR at 10 wasn’t the best life choice.” She shook her head, not looking away from the road. “This kid. She wanted to know if I was a robot.”

Root laughed out loud at that. “I guessing that didn’t go over well.”

“Kid legit thought she was a spy, counter-surveillance tactics and everything! And then she comes out with ‘Are you a robot?’ What the fuck. I don’t even know how she’s gonna be as a teenager. She emails me every once in a while but you know, Samaritan.” Root nodded, solemn again, and Shaw shrugged. “I guess I should just be glad that she didn’t take radio silence for a year and a half to mean I was dead, that she still called me when she needed me.”

Root rested her chin on her hand and looked at Shaw. Shaw glanced over and caught her looking, raising an eyebrow in a question. “Sameen Shaw and an emotional attachment. I thought you were pretending you weren’t capable of those.”

“Yeah, OK, whatever,” Shaw said defensively. “It’s not like I’m ready to adopt her or anything. She doesn’t have anyone; mom’s in prison, grandfather’s dead, tweaker cousin’s probably dead by now. And she could be a damn good operative someday. I’m just keeping an eye out for the up-and-coming competition.”

“Competition. Right.” Shaw huffed and Root let it lie with only a small smile.

 

The boarding school was about what Root expected it to be. Classical style, columns that didn’t serve any strong supportive purpose, red brick façade that made the whole thing look quaint amongst its snowy grounds. There were lights on in the front office and a few other windows on the upper stories and Shaw glared at the building as she parked the car.

“I don’t want to have to go tromping through this place during school hours looking for the kid,” she muttered but Root’s attention was drawn away by the Machine. She grinned and Shaw looked at her. “What?” she asked, tone annoyed.

“She says that someone got into her school’s records and listed a Shaw Wren as her foster-sister and only family member with sign-out privileges.” Root hadn’t even met the kid but she was starting to grow on her. Shaw just closed her eyes from a moment then undid her seatbelt with aggression.

“Now she’s just gonna be a bigger pain in my ass, isn’t she,” she grumbled; Root hurried to catch up as Shaw stomped across the snow, Bear keeping pace easily. Shaw reached the front door and held it open for them both. Root batted her eyes at her as she guided Bear inside and grinned when Shaw rolled hers.

“Can I help you ladies?” an older woman with thin-rimmed glasses and gray hair in a bun asked as they bustled in the second interior door.

“Yeah, uh,” Shaw said, glancing at Root. “I’m here to pick up my foster sister. Genrika Zhirova?”

“Shaw?!” a voice cried from down the hall and was soon followed by a pile of strawberry blonde as it crashed into Shaw, reaching up to her shoulders. Shaw caught and steadied the girl and Root took in the black t-shirt and jeans, the beat-up sneakers, and the red gold curls that escaped her high ponytail to hang around her face. “You came!”

“Told you I would, kiddo,” Shaw said gruffly, patting Gen’s back a few times before pushing her away.

“Let me get my stuff!” she said and dashed back down the hall as Shaw turned back to the older woman. She was glancing back and forth from the computer screen to Shaw’s face like she was evaluating. Root wondered where Gen had managed to get a picture of Shaw in the first place.

“Is there something I need to sign to take her home or…” Shaw trailed off and glanced at Root when the older woman frowned at her.

“The term doesn’t end until Friday,” she informed them both. “Couldn’t you wait a few more days?”

“We would,” Root said, smoothly stepping in as Shaw frowned in irritation, “especially with how seriously Gen takes her studies. Unfortunately, we’re leaving the country for the holiday and a flight out tomorrow was the only one we could get so close to the holiday. You know how it is this time of year. Gen swore she wasn’t missing any tests.”

The woman nodded slowly then sniffed, looking between them. “Are you another foster sister?” she asked and Root grinned.

“Of a sort,” she said, linking her arm with Shaw’s. “The honorary kind.” The woman blinked, nodded, then turned away to grab a binder. As soon as her back was turned, Shaw shook her arm loose and glared when Root blew her a kiss.

“Sign here, please,” the woman said, the binder hitting the counter with a loud clack that sent echoes reverberating through the wood-clad halls. Shaw took the pen as Gen ran back up, carting a duffel about the same size as herself along with a full-looking backpack over her shoulders and clad in a thick red coat that hung to her knees.

“Are we ready?” she asked and then saw Bear at Root’s feet and gasped. “Is this the dog?”

Shaw grinned, thunking the pen down and turning from the old woman. “Yep. That’s Bear.” Bear whuffed at her and sniffed at her hair while she laughed. “Are we good?” she asked over her shoulder and the woman nodded.

“Bye, Mrs. Lancer! Have a good holiday!” Gen said as she ran out the doors. The smile dropped from her face as soon as she took in the cold air and she rolled her eyes. “I’m so fucking glad to be out of there,” she muttered and Root smiled. “Who are you?” she asked suspiciously, eying Root as they all trailed towards the car, Bear and Root hanging back.

Shaw glanced at them while she unlocked the car. “That’s Root.” She didn’t say anymore and Gen kept her gaze on Root, tossing her duffel on the floor of the car and smiling at Bear as he sat in his harness next to her.

“Nice to meet you. Are you part of the team that saved me?”

“I am now,” Root said, smiling back at her as Shaw’s car roared to life under them. Root spared a second to give Shaw a look, clearly judging her for her affection for fast cars. Shaw just gave her a look right back as she put the car in gear.

“What were you doing then? How did you get recruited? Did you use to be an operative too?”

“I see you’re still asking a lot of questions. Haven’t you learned that gets you into trouble yet?” Shaw asked. Gen shot her an unimpressed glare.

“I’m with you. It’s not like you’re gonna let her kill me if I ask something she doesn’t want me to know.”

“You don’t know that,” Shaw muttered but Root just smiled.

“I was never an operative as such. I was more… a freelancer,” she said and watched Gen’s eyes narrow.

“Freelancing doing what?”

Shaw sent her a significant look but Root didn’t need it; she wasn’t exactly eager to tell this child that she used to be the best assassin for hire the dark web had ever seen. “Making connections between people, contracting out jobs, doing a bit of hacking.”

Gen’s face lit up at the last word. “Oh man,” she breathed, “you’re a hacker? What’s the best thing you’ve ever done? Can you teach me? I’m learning a little but nothing big, nothing like I need to know to be an operative.”

“Since when do you need to be a hacker to be an operative?” Shaw asked, a little sharply.

Gen rolled her eyes and Shaw looked affronted. “Infosec is the new frontier of tradecraft, Shaw. It’s all digital now, not safecracking and B&Es.”

“Yeah, Shaw,” Root teased and Shaw huffed angrily.

“I can pull over and leave you both in the snow. Try and hack your way out of that.”

“You’d never,” Root said, pulling out her most coquettish expression. Shaw made a disgusted noise and turned her eyes back to the road.

“Try me, nerds,” she muttered.

“How did you end up working with Shaw?” Gen asked, leaning forward from the backseat.

“Sameen here actually tells me we started working together pretty immediately after the two of you went up against corrupt cops. Sorry I had to miss out on that one.”

“I would have shot your ass if you’d been involved then,” Shaw growled and Root shrugged.

“Fair enough. You know she really likes you,” Root informed Gen and was rewarded with a grin. “She wouldn’t even answer my calls at first. And after we worked so well together.”

“You were in a cage,” Shaw reminded her, voice low.

“I mean after that, obviously. I was dealing with a suspicious colleague who wasn’t sure what side I was on,” she said, turning in her seat to inform Gen. “It happens. But Shaw still came to visit me, alleviating my hours of boredom with her sparkling personality.” Gen giggled and Shaw glared.

“I should have known letting the two of you interact would be a bad idea. The two biggest pains in my ass would only exacerbate the other.”

“That’s a big word,” Gen teased, taking her cue from Root.

“I will turn around and drop your ass back at school,” Shaw threatened without heat and Gen giggled again.

“Tell me about you, Gen,” Root said. “You’re from Russia?”

Gen’s smile slipped off and she shrugged. “Yeah. Was born in Solntsevo. Mom was in prison so I got sent here to live with my grandfather. He died and then Shaw found me.”

“Wait, hold on,” Shaw cut in. “Mom _was_ in prison? She out?” Gen bit her lip and shrugged again.

“That’s why I called you. I had to get out of there. I got a phone call last night from Moscow. My mom died in prison. Five years ago. And they’re just now telling me.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t deal with all those trust fund assholes and their diplomat parents, telling me they ‘understood what it’s like in Russia’ or some shit. They don’t have a fucking clue.”

“I’m sorry, kid,” Shaw said and Root nodded, watching Gen.

“I was 6 when she was arrested. I’ve spent more of my life without her than with her. It just sucks that she died a stranger to me. I didn’t know her, not really. I don’t know, I just didn’t want to have to process all of this shit around those idiots.”

“I get that,” Shaw said and a slight smile played at the edges of Gen’s lips.

“You do? You develop feelings while I was rotting away in this prep school?”

“Pretty cushy place to rot,” Shaw shot back then glanced at Root. “No. I’m 98% sure feelings are fake.”

Gen rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say. Hey, you want to stop for food?”

 

Root insisted they come back to her new place; Shaw didn’t fight her when Root pointed out that her own postage stamp of a place didn’t come with a second bedroom.

“I’d really prefer not to have another snoring roommate for a bit,” Gen said and Bear barked in agreement.

“He snores louder than I do,” Shaw protested but parked in the garage under Root’s building and took the service elevator all the way up to Root’s penthouse.

“Holy shit,” Gen breathed as Shaw opened the door. “Look at this place! Since when does tradecraft pay this good?” She dropped her stuff by the door and ran towards the windows, looking at the flurries that had started up on their drive home.

“Since never,” Shaw said, heading over to the pantry to put some dry food in Bear’s bowl. His tail thumped as he sat down in front of it, patiently waiting for her to leave before he ate. She patted him on the head than leaned against the counter to pull her shoes off and toss them haphazardly towards the door.

“I’ve got a bit more going for me in the petty cash department,” Root said, pleased with Gen’s fascination with it all while ignoring Shaw grumpily undressing behind her. “Hacking pays better than the Marines.”

“Medical school isn’t exactly cheap either,” Shaw reminded her but Root ignored her.

“Grab your stuff,” she told Gen, “your bedroom’s on this side.” She led her down a bright hall, one wall still entirely windows, and opened the three doors off of it. “Two are bedrooms. Pick whichever. Bathroom is here.”

Gen nodded, looking around curiously. “Shaw’s staying here too, right? So I should give her first choice on which bedroom she wants.”

“Um,” Root said eloquently and Gen looked at her as she tried to recover. “I’m sure Shaw’s fine with whichever you choose.”

“What’s Shaw fine with?” Shaw asked, coming down the hall carrying a water bottle that she tossed to Gen. Her feet in just socks, Shaw didn’t make a sound against Root’s floors.

“Which bedroom do you want?” Gen asked. “I don’t really care which one but I figured I’d give you first pick.” Shaw blinked at her twice as she pressed her lips together and Root fought valiantly to fight off a laugh.

“Whichever,” she said, mouth pursed and expression as close to wide-eyed and innocent as Shaw ever got. It ended up somewhere around deer-in-the-headlights.

“Why are you both being weird?” Gen asked, glancing between them before dumping her bag just inside the nearer door. “I’m just asking.”

“Not weird,” Shaw insisted, intense gaze making it even weirder as Gen looked even more suspicious. “Just didn’t think about it.”

_At least_ that _was honest_ , Root thought to herself as she made her exit back down the hall and left the two of them to talk. She went back to her computer and made herself busy until Shaw came back down the hall Gen-less.

“She wanted some space,” Shaw said in response to Root’s look. Shaw threw herself down on the couch a few feet from Root’s desk and flipped on the TV absently. “I didn’t know what to tell her.” Root knew she wasn’t talking about Gen mourning her mother.

“I didn’t know what you wanted to tell her so I didn’t tell her anything. She’s your protégé,” Root reminded her. “I just met her. I’m taking my cues from you.”

“What do I tell her? ‘Oh, you know how I’m a sociopath? Don’t get scared or lonely or happy? Yeah, I’m maybe cohabitating with someone who I am also sleeping with. I know it looks like a relationship. But feelings are still fake.’ That’ll go over so well.” Shaw tipped her head back against the couch and Root rested her cheek on her fist.

“She knows you care about her. I know you care about me. If anyone’s going to get it, it’s her.”

“Why, because she already knows I’m broken?” Shaw scoffed and Root frowned.

“Because she of all people knows how capable you are of feeling deep down. You may have everyone else fooled but the two of us? We know you, Sameen. Don’t try to push her away.”

Shaw looked at her sideways but nodded. “Come watch whatever the hell this movie is with me.”

“Such a resounding endorsement,” Root said but grabbed her laptop and moved over to share the couch with Shaw, shoving her cold toes under Shaw’s thigh.

Shaw still hadn’t figured out what movie it was by the time Gen came out of her room with a book. She curled up cross-legged in the purple chair adjacent to the couch and looked at them. Shaw looked back, somewhat hostile. Root tried not to laugh.

“What,” Shaw said and Gen shrugged.

“Whatcha watching?”

“She has no idea,” Root informed her. Shaw glared.

“Look, it’s got bad fight scenes, fake blood, and unrealistic gunfire. It doesn’t deserve me learning its name.” She crossed her arms defensively and Root shook her head as she continued her work on the computer. Having gotten bored of stealing from criminals, she was hacking into the 8th Precinct’s camera system just to check on Fusco. She’d never admit it but she was horrifyingly fond of him and she was pretty sure the sentiment was mutual. He was sitting at his desk reading over a file when a young man came over to talk to him, his face full of admiration. Fusco looked gruffly pleased with the attention and waved him away after a few minutes.

“What are _you_ watching?” Gen asked, craning to look at Root’s screen. She angled it towards her so Gen could see the movement around the office.

“Just checking on a friend,” she replied slowly, still trying to make out the picture on the file Fusco had in front of him.

“Wait, this is live? You hacked into a police station’s surveillance system?” Gen looked wide-eyed and impressed and Root preened, just a little. Shaw caught it, if her eye roll was any indication.

“Well, I put it together so I’ve had a backdoor into it since. Events occurred to make it a reasonable precaution.” Root grinned at Gen as she stood up to get closer.

Shaw snorted. “Events. Like your precious Machine thinking it was a good idea to make Lionel and John partners.”

“John?” Gen asked. “The co-worker who was on your team when you saved me?” Shaw shifted and Root’s chest felt like cold water had been dumped in it.

“Yeah. He had to play detective for a while. It was definitely a learning curve for him.”

Gen glanced between them, taking in the solemn turn of their faces, and nodded. She didn’t need to be told. She turned back to her book to hide the awkwardness, planting herself back in the chair. The only sounds were Root’s typing, Gen turning pages, and those coming from the TV. No one said anything until the credits on Shaw’s movie began to roll and she flicked off the TV.

“You got homework or something?” Shaw asked Gen gruffly and Gen’s head popped up.

“Not really. I mean, I do but this isn’t it. This is just for me. I’ve read it like six times.” She held it up so they could see the cover, a magnifying glass with red and black words all around it. The spine was broken and the edges were tattering; it was very clearly well-loved.

“Telling Lies?” Shaw asked. “Really? I thought tradecraft was all about the digital now.”

The look Gen gave her was unamused at best but Root cut in before she could say anything. “Ekman’s interesting. Micro expressions, deception signs, he really is the founder of this branch of study.”

Gen turned to her eagerly. “Right? I mean, I know it’s like 30 years out of date and there’s a lot more research now but this was the beginning, the basics of uncovering deceit and making yourself a better liar. You can’t go wrong with the basics. And it’s honestly just a fun read.”

“I first read it in high school, when I was about your age actually. It definitely made a difference in my life,” Root said with a barely concealed grin. Gen didn’t really need to know what she’d been doing at 14 that had made lying without conscience or outward sign of deception so vital. She could let her think it was because high school was tough on everyone and not get into the literally gory details.

“I think you’re both nerds,” Shaw announced, getting to her feet. “You don’t need a book to tell you how to lie.” She hit her thigh gently and Bear got to his feet, following her.

“We can’t all be robots, Shaw,” Gen reminded her. “Some of us have to hide our feelings when we lie.”

“Sucks for you,” Shaw replied. “I’m taking Bear out. You’ll have to go on without me.”

“However will we survive,” Gen said, smiling at her. Shaw rolled her eyes and walked out, Bear’s leash in her hand. Gen watched her go and then turned back to Root, expression serious. “So who are you really? To Shaw.”

Root’s hands stopped but she didn’t look away from her computer screen. “That’s really up to her, isn’t it.” It all was. Whether or not to tell Gen, what to tell Gen, what the hell they even were to each other, it was all up to Shaw. She evaluated whether she felt comfortable with that and was surprised to find that she did.

“Oh. So it’s like that,” Gen said and Root looked up and caught her eye. “Do you love her?”

Blinking for a moment, Root smiled blandly. “That’s a fairly personal question for someone you just met a few hours ago.” Gen just crossed her arms and waited for an answer. “You really do care for Shaw, don’t you?” Gen didn’t even blink.

“She’s the only one I’ve had that I can trust since my grandfather died. And that still doesn’t answer my question.”

Root had to smile at her doggedness. “Suppose I have no interest in answering it. What then?”

“Then I tell you to stay away from her. She doesn’t care about people easily and she cares about you. She’s comfortable with you. I’ve never actually seen her comfortable except with a gun in her hand. So if you don’t love her, you need to leave her alone.”

Root’s heart warmed at Gen’s defensiveness of her friend. She wasn’t threatened by this slip of a teenager who was maybe 90 pounds if she tried hard and believed in herself but she loved that Shaw had inspired in her such loyalty that she would threaten a woman who was taller, stronger, had many more resources, and could be armed inside of 5 seconds. Shaw may have struggled with the concept of love and even the very word but she had a way of inspiring it in others.

“I’d die for her,” Root said quietly, not looking at Gen when she said it. She wasn’t even sure she’d said it loud enough for Gen to hear. It was the most honest way she could put it. What she felt for Shaw went far beyond love. Love was a childish thing, the thing a child looks at their mother with and dreams of finding like they do in fairy tales. Root had outgrown love long ago. It had died in her heart when Hanna did, when her mother did. What she and Shaw had wasn’t love. It was something bigger, something fundamental. It was caught up in hunger and need, life and death. “I’d die for her.”

She felt Gen’s eyes on her for a few minutes but when she glanced back, Gen’s eyes were only on her book. Root sighed and closed her computer, standing up to place it back on her desk. She stretched while looking out at the grey city that she’d come to claim as her own. The door opened behind her and nails skid across her hardwood floors.

“Hey, Eeyore,” Shaw called and Root turned, eyebrows raised. “The sky doesn’t hold the secret to the universe, no matter how you stare at it.”

“The truth is a vast thing, Sameen,” Root said breezily before kneeling as Bear came running at her. He had snowflakes stuck in his fur and flung water all over her as he shook himself off. “Thanks for that, dude,” she told him, laughing as he tried to lick her face.

Shaw ignored her in favor of throwing herself down on the couch and announcing, “I’m hungry.” Gen looked at Shaw over her book with one eyebrow raised. Root just stayed where she was as Bear tried to convince her he was a lap dog.

“When are you not?” Root asked, smiling when Gen giggled.

 

That night brought its own challenges, mostly for Shaw. Gen was blinking rapidly at the TV, trying hard not to give in to sleep. Root was just about to tell her that she didn’t have to wait up for them, that they wouldn’t find it rude if she went to bed, when she saw Gen glance at Shaw. Then she understood.

She was waiting to see what Shaw would do.

Shaw looked at Root and opened her mouth to say something but glanced at Gen and closed it again. Root pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh. If Shaw decided to acknowledge Gen’s challenge, Gen would lose in a big way. Shaw could go days without sleep while Gen was already fading fast. If Shaw gave Gen what she wanted, a clear answer from Shaw herself, Shaw would be defensive and hilariously hostile about it forever. Gen didn’t necessarily deserve that and they both knew that.

Root was wondering if she should put them both out of their misery and tell Shaw that Gen knew that there was more here than houseguests when Gen suggested they put on another movie. Shaw shook her head.

“Have fun, kid, but I’m going to bed.” Excitement flashed across Gen’s face for just a second but Shaw paused, halfway to her feet. “Something to say?” she asked, straightening up. Gen shook her head, all wide-eyed innocence.

“No. Sleep well.”

Shaw nodded slowly, expression suspicious, but went to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water out of the fridge. She stopped with the fridge door open, light shining into the dark-lit room. Root bit back another smile. She could practically see the realization hit Shaw that she had to make a choice here. Shaw huffed and closed the door, darkening the room again. She practically stomped into the master bedroom, shoving through the double doors with an aggressive shoulder check.

Gen laughed, covering her mouth to try and muffle the sound, but they both knew Shaw had heard it when something hit the bedside table with a clatter. An anxiety Root hadn’t even realized she had left her at the noise. It had been funny, Shaw’s obvious indecision about what to say to Gen about whatever this was. But it had also subconsciously pulled at Root. Gen was as close as Shaw got to family excepting only the mother who thought she was dead; if Shaw had been unwilling to acknowledge what they had in front of Gen, the chance that it would have shattered Root was higher than she wanted to think about.

“You got your answer,” Root teased Gen. “Go to bed before you pass out in that chair.” Gen nodded, squeezing her eyes shut as if fight off sleep long enough to get into her bed. Root shook her head. Gen wouldn’t have stood a chance if Shaw had decided to stay up.

Root flipped off the TV after Gen had closed the door to her room and made her way in the dark to her own. The lights from the city came through the windows, lighting her way as they glittered like artificial stars. Shaw was laying on her side, back facing Root when she walked in.

“Are you all huffy now?” Root asked lightly, shedding her clothes and not bothering to move them from where they dropped.

“No,” Shaw said, tone sulky. Root smiled to herself, hidden in shadow as she tugged an overlarge sleep shirt over her head. “I was gonna tell her. Now she knows. Problem solved. I don’t even have to say anything.”

“Did you want to tell her?” Root asked, sliding into the black silk sheets that Shaw had judged her mercilessly about for days. Shaw shrugged, an awkward jerk with one arm holding her weight against the mattress.

“Did I want to sit down and have that conversation? Yeah, absolutely. Was super looking forward to it,” Shaw snapped. Root’s stomach clenched a little with something like fear but she made herself take deep breaths.

“Did you want to explain what exactly this is?”

“How can I when I can’t even explain it to you?” Shaw said, voice low. Root didn’t reply and Shaw didn’t elaborate. Instead, she turned over onto her belly and went up on her elbows. She leaned over Root, who watched her move through the dark like dense shadow. Shaw kissed Root, deeply but not aggressively. “Go to sleep,” she said, still sharing air with Root. Root surged up under Shaw to kiss her again, almost toppling Shaw onto her when she gripped Shaw’s shoulders.

“Sweet dreams,” Root said a little breathlessly as Shaw pulled back and rolled over onto her back. Shaw snorted and Root closed her eyes with a smile on her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN. I love this kid a lot.


	8. Chapter 8

Root was curled up on the couch with her laptop and a cup of tea when a bleary-eyed Gen stumbled out of her room. “Hi,” she said softly, eyes squinted against the beams of light filtering in through the south-facing windows.

“Good morning,” Root said, watching the teen stumble over to the couch with all the grace that her long limbs held. “Want coffee? Tea?” Gen perked up at the words.

“Coffee?” she asked with a hopeful lilt to the end of the word. Root waved to the machine in the corner of the kitchen. “Grounds are in the cabinet right underneath. There’s sugar in the jar and creamer in the fridge.” She turned to see Gen poking at the machine cautiously and Root pressed her lips together to hide her amusement. Tapping a few keys on her computer, she frowned at her long-running hack but let it work. She set the computer on the table and pulled her legs up on the chair, cradling her mug as she watched Gen wince at her first sip of the coffee she’d prepared.

“Any plans for today?” she asked and Gen jumped. “Homework?”

“I’ve got some but…” she trailed off with a grimace. “Sometimes I think about leaving school.” Root’s eyebrows went up and Gen came over with her coffee. “I mean, I know what I want to do and school may help me get noticed by the right people but… It’s not fun. Learning new languages is fun. The rest of it?”

“Math will help you with computers,” Root reminded her, taking another drink of her tea.

“OK, yeah, I get that. But you don’t need a high school diploma for that, right? I mean, if I took the New York diploma exam right this second, I’d pass. Then I can just get to the important stuff.” The look on Gen’s face was mutinous so Root didn’t say anything about whether she agreed with Gen’s assessment.

“Important stuff like what?”

“Learning computers, learning languages. Maybe even learning to fight. You know, the things I’ll need as an operative.”

Shaw snorted behind her and Gen jumped, almost sloshing her still-full cup of coffee. “You wanna be an analyst or an operative? Because if you wanna be an operative, what you really need to know is how not to get dead.” Shaw grabbed her own mug and filled it. “In whatever form that takes. Hand-to-hand, various weapons, blending in.” She took a drink and made a face. “Kid, what did you do?”

“I’m sorry!” Gen said. “Is it bad?”

“A filter would help,” she replied, dumping the cup in the sink then doing the same with the pot. “Apparently, we’re adding ‘making coffee’ to the list of things you need to learn.”

“See, this is what I mean!” Gen said, setting down her mug on the table with a clatter. “All the shit I need to know, I’m not getting taught even though I’m at one of the top schools in the country.”

“The battle cry of teens everywhere,” Shaw muttered as the coffee maker started percolating again. “Look, you wanna learn shit as a teenager? Do what the rest of us did and learn it while still going to school. It’ll teach you how to keep up appearances at the very least. I didn’t start this until I joined the Marines but Root’s been doing this since she was like 12.”

Gen turned to her with eager eyes. “You were hacking through high school? I mean, of course you were. How long was it before you got really good?”

Root glanced at Shaw, not wanting to really get into her past with this kid. “I’m not the best role model for any of this,” she insisted. “I was a criminal. The chances that I’d end up dead, in prison, or both were near certain. I learned how to defend myself for survival’s sake. I didn’t finish school because I was too busy running.”

Shaw cut in, voice muffled by the granola bar she had in her mouth. “You didn’t finish school?”

“According to the records, I absolutely did,” she answered, flashing a quick grin. “Grading software was ridiculously unsecured then. But I was trying to keep my mom in a facility that took care of her. They weren’t cheap. But they _were_ a decent reason for me to be out of town for days at a time on a job.”

“Were you-” Shaw started to ask then cut off, looking at Gen. “Did you start all of your ventures around that time?”

Root gave a little smile at Shaw’s slip but nodded. “It’s funny how many guys were eager to teach me to use a gun in a hunting town.” She looked at Gen and gave her a crooked smile. “You don’t want to do homework today. But do you want to learn something else?”

Gen’s eyes lit up and she looked at Shaw in askance.

“I knew letting the two of you meet was going to be a pain in my ass.”

 

Root could feel Shaw’s eyes following her as she stopped outside of a dilapidated-looking brick building, Art Nouveau style arches holding the skeletal remains of what had probably been gilding at one time. She assessed the doors, swinging the crowbar up on her shoulder thoughtfully. It’d be a shame to break them. They were carved and ornate, hidden behind metal bars as though in a prison. She held the crowbar out to Shaw until she took it with an eyeroll and then took the picks out of her pocket.

“Lesson one, Gen,” she said, getting to her knees. “Never leave home without these.”

“And always end up somewhere where the cameras aren’t,” Shaw muttered as Root worked on the first lock.

“Oh, there are cameras. Come on, it’s Midtown. It’s just that the cops don’t care about this place, even the honest ones. It was a club and then a speakeasy, even though it was the worst-kept secret in the neighborhood. Someone bought it after, tried to cash in on the history, but you didn’t get history tourists around here too often. It got foreclosed on and the bank sold it to the Russians in the 80s, who sold it to the Italians as their territory shifted and the Five Families decided to be amicable while convincing HR not to bother. HR convinced everyone else and now it’s just a blind spot in plain sight.  The Italians used it as a community and training center for a while. And now,” she said, the second lock clicking open, “since the Correction, it’s been empty and open to us to use.” She led the way inside.

“What’s the Correction?” Gen asked at the same time that Shaw asked, “How do you know all this?”

“A little bird told me,” Root answered Shaw with a grin, who answered with an eye roll, before turning to Gen. “It was… a big moment in New York where basically all of the big gangs lost their leaders. No leaders, no recruitment. Power vacuums lead to chaos and bloodshed unless executed just right and the people who orchestrated the Correction were very, very good. And even then, they left the Bratva alone as a sort of failsafe.” Shaw scowled and kicked a dusty chair out of her way as Root led them down to the basement. “It’s soundproofed down here,” she said as she used the flashlight in her pocket to make her way down the stairs. “It was necessary for what they used it for.” She caught Gen’s arm on the last stair as the girl almost fell. “Watch your step.” Root left Gen behind as she headed for the breaker box, exactly where the Machine told her it was.

Flipping them, the lights came on to reveal a range that wasn’t quite professional but frankly wasn’t far off. She wondered absently how much of that was Elias’s demand for organization and competence in the alliance and how much they came by naturally. Too many bangers couldn’t shoot worth a damn to make her think this sort of thing was common. Gen’s eyes grew big and she looked between Shaw and Root. “Are you actually going to let me shoot?”

Shaw sighed and shook her head but said, “Might as well. You’ve gotta learn at some point.” Gen bounced on her toes and raced over to Root’s side when she pulled two sets of shooting earmuffs from her bag. Gen grabbed them both then handed one to Shaw.

“What do you have on you?” Root asked, pulling her own pair out.

“Do I even want to know why you had those on hand?” Root opened her mouth and Shaw cut her off. “I’ve got my .45 and my .380. What about you?”

“I was hoping you had your .45. I’ve got both my 9mils and .22. I wanted her to get the hang of the recoil so I’m gonna start her with the .22. I think we can probably skip the .380,” Root said, hunting through the debris on the floor until she found a box of paper forms. The corners of the cardboard were damp and warped but the water had only managed to curl the edges of the paper inside. Root sighed. “I guess I’ll have to bring my own next time.”

“You had earmuffs but not forms?” Shaw asked, tone unimpressed, but Root ignored her in favor of sticking up the forms in the bays. “You brought a fucking staple gun?” she asked incredulously as Root put said staple gun back in her bag and used the drawstring system to send the target to the end. Pulling out a small case, she brought it over to Gen, whose eyes were wide like saucers.

“This thing has a small cartridge. Small bullet, small casing, small recoil,” Root told her, flipping the case open and taking out the gun. She demonstrated how to load it, how to take the safety off, and handed the gun to Gen. “Aim it at the target once I tell you to fire. Not yet,” she added, noting the girl’s finger on the trigger. “It’s going to pop a casing and I’ve got enough half-healed scars without adding hot brass to the mix.” Gen swallowed and nodded, clutching at the gun with both hands. Once Root gave her the go-ahead, she fired; she hit the target just outside the form’s head. She jumped when the gun fired and the casing hit the ground with a ping. Quickly putting the gun down on the table in front of her, she shook her hands out.

“It almost jumped out of my hand,” she said and Shaw snorted, ignoring the frown Root aimed at her.

“It does that, kid. Just don’t tense up. Keep your shoulders and elbows relaxed, wrists locked. Don’t hold it like a lifeline. It’s going to move and you’re not strong enough to stop it. So you move with it.” Gen nodded and tried again, this time hitting the form’s left shoulder. She gave a little shriek of joy. Shaw rolled her eyes, smiling a little. “Good job, you clipped him.”

“We can’t all be snipers, Shaw,” Gen snapped. “Just because you could put a bullet through a quarter at my age doesn’t mean we all can.”

“She did hit the actual target on her two first ever shots,” Root pointed out. “Better than I did with my first two.”

“C’mon, then, Teach,” Shaw said, holding out her own .45 to Root. “Show her what you can do now.”

“To display growth?” she asked, coy smile playing on her lips as she watched Shaw subtly lick her lips when she took the gun in her left hand. She didn’t wait for an answer, just set up her own target by the next bay’s sticky drawstring. As soon as it was in place and the gun was loaded, she fired three quick shots. Two blew holes through the center of the form’s chest while the other tore through the head.

“Perfect kill formation,” Shaw said from behind Root, closer than was maybe necessary. Root felt warmth flush through her and her breath came short in a way that felt highly inappropriate with a teenage girl just on the other side of the plexiglass divider. “How long have you been itching to do that?”

“So long,” she breathed, feeling her mouth dry as she was brutally aware of Shaw’s proximity. She turned her head, instinct to look at Shaw over her shoulder just to see if Shaw was as affected as she was too strong to ignore. Shaw met her eyes once, her gaze heated, before withdrawing, moving back over to Gen.

“Let’s see you take the .22 again,” Shaw said and Root exhaled before raising her own gun again.

 

It snowed a little on the way home and Shaw bitched the entire way. Root and Gen ignored her, Gen practically skipping. She’d managed to get a cluster at center mass with the .22 and had done decently with the .45. No longer jumping at every trigger pull had helped her aim immensely.

Gen stopped short on the sidewalk and Shaw almost ran into her. “What the hell, kid?” she asked, holding Gen by the shoulders to keep them both from eating concrete.

“It’s almost Christmas here,” Gen said, pointing up at the decorations that lined the streets. “I kinda forgot.” Root and Shaw looked at each other behind her.

“I did too,” Root admits, shrugging. There hadn’t been a whole lot of time in her life since her mom took sick to devote to things like holidays. The way New York wrapped itself in Christmas was both familiar in its annual nature and entirely alien. Midtown was especially decorative; the closer to Times Square, the more over-the-top everything got. She smiled when she glanced at Shaw again, knowing exactly how much she hated Times Square.

“Christmas in the West is weird,” Gen said. “It was one of the first things I noticed after coming here, how early you guys celebrate.”

“Have you considered that maybe it’s the Eastern church that’s weird, using a calendar that no one else uses?” Shaw asked mildly and Gen frowned. “And besides, aren’t kids supposed to be excited for presents no matter when they come?”

“Yeah, except everyone asks what you got when you go back to school and it was hard to be the weird Russian kid who was telling everyone that Christmas hadn’t happened yet.” Gen stopped to look at a window display of a teddy bear riding on a train around Santa’s workshop while a glass-eyed fairy sprinkled glitter on the scene from above. “And now I’m the weird kid who doesn’t leave over the breaks. Except this time.”

“How many of those kids get to hang out with us though?” Root asked, trying to pull the girl from her melancholy. She hoped it worked based on the bright smile she got in return. “We’re much more fun than any of the rich parents of your classmates,” she added conspiratorially. Shaw just shook her head and kept walking, shoulders hunched against the cold as she started to leave them both behind.

“I’m hungry,” Shaw announced the minute they walked in the door. Root rolled her eyes and didn’t say anything as she began to unload her bag, leaving the staple gun on the table by the front door. Bear’s claws skittered across the wood floors as he dove out of his bed to meet them. “What do we even have? Should we just not even fuck around in the kitchen and order out?” she asked, scratching under Bear’s jaw.

“That’s not sanitary, Shaw,” Gen said, shaking her head with mocking concern. Shaw turned a glare on her and she giggled. Shaking her head, Shaw flopped back on the couch.

“Teenagers. Get better material.”

“How about,” Root began, cutting them both off, “I make something that I know you like?” Shaw leaned her head back to look at Root, still on her back on the couch. “Something perfect for a cold day?” She turned to Gen. “What’s your feeling on spicy stuff?”

“I love it!” she said, eyes lighting up. “The food at school is so bland. Salt is too spicy for some of them, it’s ridiculous.”

“Any allergies I should know about?” Gen shook her head but put her book down and followed Root to the kitchen while she started taking spices down from the cabinet. She took a seat at the island and watched carefully as Root quickly made a paste and coated chicken with it. Setting it on the stove to brown, she started to take out other ingredients. “Want to chop some things for me?” she asked Gen, who nodded eagerly.

“I don’t know how to cook. Like, at all. I can make basic stuff like ramen and boiled eggs but anything more than that, I’m super lost.”

“Root loves bragging about how good of a cook she is so she’ll probably teach you a few things if you flatter her enough,” Shaw said from the couch where she was flipping through Gen’s book. Root and Gen shot her identical unamused looks but otherwise ignored her.

“Promise me you won’t cut your fingers off,” Root said, handing Gen a knife handle first along two stalks of celery and two pieces of andouille. When Gen laughed and nodded, she said, “Half inch chunks please.” She left Gen to it as she cut up the onions and jalapenos. When they were done, Root took the browned chicken out of the pot and threw the vegetables in there to simmer with a few red pepper flakes.

“Red pepper flakes, cayenne, and jalapeno?” Gen asked with her eyebrows raised, something like concern on her face.

“You’ll forget it’s snowing outside,” Shaw said with an almost predatory grin. Gen frowned and Root rolled her eyes.

“I cut the membrane out of the jalapeno and used less red pepper flakes than usual. It won’t be that hot, promise.” After pouring in the chicken stock and rice, Root popped the whole thing in the oven. “So that wasn’t too scary, was it?”

“I didn’t actually cook anything, though,” Gen reminded her. Root shrugged. She decided she really enjoyed watching the girl learn and she found something satisfying in teaching that surprised her just a little. She’d been so solitary for so long, she’d never really had the chance.

“We’ve got time if you were serious about learning.”

Root felt the tiniest flicker of guilt as she said the words. She knew exactly how to play people, how to invite closeness, how to get people to let her in. She fell into the patterns easily, even when she meant every word. It wasn’t like she didn’t like Gen. Gen seemed good for Shaw in a way that Root hadn’t really expected. But it would be so easy to let this girl stumble her way through the traps that Root laid as easily as she breathed. So she resisted the urge and asked Gen about school.

When Gen mentioned she was studying German, Shaw switched to the language just to tease her but smirked when Gen responded in kind. They spent the rest of the time waiting for the timer to beep speaking the language, Gen stumbling every once in a while.

Gen volunteered to set the table, a newly acquired jet black affair, with the teal plates that Root had picked up with almost girlish enthusiasm. Decorating a place with only a thought about what she liked, instead of what the persona she was playing would like, was new and fun and maybe a little nerve-wracking.

Rediscovery, she thought, watching Gen and Shaw playing with an eager Bear. Rediscovery of who she was and what she wanted on this side of war and death. She didn’t have any delusions about growing old with Shaw at her side. If either of them lived to see 45, she’d be grateful. But a home and maybe people to call family to put in it. It was more than she ever thought she’d get, growing up queer in small town Texas. It was more than she thought she deserved, hands as drenched in blood as hers. But, she thought as she watched Shaw’s face light up at the first bite, she’d fight like hell to keep it against gods and armies and fate itself.

That night after Root shut off the lights in the great room, she walked into the bedroom where Shaw had disappeared a few hours before. Pulling off her shirt, she dropped it on the ground and let her eyes adjust to the darkness just as she noticed the shift of shadows towards her. She had her switchblade out of her pocket and against the throat of the owner of the hand over her mouth in seconds.

“That kind of party, huh?” Shaw’s voice was deep and rich and arousal ran through Root’s body like an electric current. She pressed the knife a little deeper just to hear Shaw’s growl as Shaw pressed her back against the wall. “You want to make me bleed?”

Shaw moved her hand so that it lay heavy on Root’s clavicle, freeing Root’s mouth to answer. “I think you just like me with a weapon in my hands,” she said, drawing the tip of the knife down Shaw’s throat. “You like me when I’m lethal.”

“You’re always lethal,” Shaw reminded her, following the line of her fingers on Root’s skin with her tongue before nipping at the underside of Root’s jaw.

“So you must always like me. Or is it only when I can show you just how alike we are?” She reached out to brush Shaw’s hair back from her face but Shaw smacked her hand away with a fierce grin, the knife leaving her grip and hitting the floor with a clatter.

“I told you once how much I appreciate a woman who knows her way around a gun. Maybe I just want to _show_ my appreciation.” Root licked her dry lips and placed her palms flat against the wall. She was rewarded with Shaw’s tongue drawing between her breasts. “I need you to be quiet for me,” Shaw said, pressing her hand over Root’s mouth again; the pressure was hard enough that she still felt it when Shaw lifted her hand, fragile lips feeling halfway to bruised. Root nodded, body heating as Shaw’s hands drew down her torso and her nails scraped across the sensitive skin of her belly.

Shaw dropped to her knees in front of Root, who bit back a moan. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she could see the profile of Shaw’s face, the filthy grin on her lips. Shaw unbuttoned Root’s jeans, moving the zipper down with excruciating slowness. She tugged the material down slowly, Root shifting against the feeling and whispered Shaw’s name. When her pants hit her ankles, Shaw helped Root out of them, calloused hands cradling her calves. As soon as they were completely off, Shaw surged up and licked at Root through her panties. Root gasped but pressed her lips together when Shaw raised an eyebrow at her.

Getting a firm grip on Root’s thighs, Shaw licked at her again and again, sometimes letting teeth brush against Root’s core. Root’s toes curled as she tried not to move, letting Shaw do what she wanted between Root’s legs. Her head hit the wall behind her with a crack when Shaw pressed firm fingers against her before using those same fingers to draw the damp fabric down and off. Root put a hand on Shaw’s shoulder to keep her balance when she stepped out of them, standing against the wall in nothing but her bra. That hand moved to grip at Shaw’s hair when Shaw went back to work, using her shoulders to shove Root’s thighs apart before using her mouth again.

Root’s whole chest seized as she tried to gasp, grip tightening in Shaw’s hair. Shaw moaned against her, a quiet vibrating thing that made Root’s knees quake. She pulled again and Shaw nipped at her, getting an embarrassing squeak out of Root. Well, it might have been embarrassing if she’d had any thoughts about something other than Shaw’s tongue running between her lips, tasting and lapping and sucking. She had Shaw’s hair practically wrapped around her fist, holding her close and trying to resist the urge to grind against Shaw’s face. Shaw’s hands were rough as they gripped Root’s hips, both tugging her cunt closer and tilting her so her back stayed pressed to the wall. Root closed her eyes and felt what Shaw was doing to her.

Shaw never moved her tongue away from Root even as one hand disappeared from Root’s hips and a finger began probing at her before sliding in roughly. Root jumped, startled, and felt a few strands of hair separate from Shaw’s scalp within her fingers. The first finger was followed up dizzyingly quickly with a second, both moving together in a harsh rhythm as they were thrust and twisted inside her. Shaw licked around them, touching Root’s clit with the tip of her tongue even as her fingers kept up their work.

Shaking and quivering under Shaw’s hands, Root felt her orgasm approaching with force. She pulled tight on Shaw’s hair to get her to move away, to delay this just a little, but Shaw shook her off and sped up her fingers. Her hips jerked as she came, her mouth open in a gasp that would have been a cry if she hadn’t remembered at the last second to be quiet. She shook with the clamp of her muscles around Shaw’s fingers but she still didn’t slow down her pace, fingers curling and spreading against Root’s body’s spasms. Shaw licked around her fingers then moved on to Root’s clit, sucking hard. Root felt herself being shoved through a second orgasm, nails scratching against Shaw’s shoulders and back with enough force that she’d find dried blood under them later. Shaw hissed against her and Root couldn’t resist the small cry that escaped her as she clutched at Shaw, at the wall, at anything to keep her up as her knees gave. She slide down the wall, Shaw’s body tight enough against her to catch her as she collapsed in a boneless heap, body still quivering as aftershocks ran through her.

“Oh fuck,” she muttered and pulled Shaw in to kiss her. “I feel deeply appreciated.” Shaw snorted against her neck.

“You fucking better.” Accompanying the words with a quick bite, Shaw pulled back and ignored Root’s pouting whine. She threw off her own shirt and underwear, pants and bra having clearly been abandoned as she waited to pounce on Root.

Root watched her but made no move to stand. She wouldn’t until she was sure the action wouldn’t land her flat on her face. Shaw threw herself back on the bed, hands drawing up her own body, coming away glistening in the faint light when she briefly touched between her legs. Arousal hit Root again, her abdomen clenching at the force of it. She crawled towards the bed, dignity unimportant in the face of her girl wet and waiting. Climbing up, Root paused only to unhook her bra and toss it to the floor.

“Hi, baby,” she whispered and slid up Shaw’s body to press a quick kiss to her lips. Shaw threw an arm around her neck and held her firm as she deepened the kiss, her other hand on Root’s waist as Root’s hands clenched in the sheets to keep her upright even as her own orgasms left her weaker than she’d ever admit.

Root pressed Shaw down against the bed as her shivers subsided, Shaw's knees bent on either side of Root's hips. Grinding forward with a stuttered gasp, Root leaned down to bite hard at the sensitive skin where Shaw's shoulder met her neck. Shaw grunted and thrust her own hips up to meet Root's.

"I know you were watching me," Root murmured in Shaw's ear as she continued her movement between Shaw's thighs. "At the range. I felt it, felt your eyes on me. If we'd been alone..." She trailed off, nipping at Shaw's earlobe while Shaw scratched gouges down Root's sides. She let the image fill her mind, Shaw taking her amongst the debris, over the table covered in dust and gunpowder. Root bit down again, breathing in the smell of Shaw and sex and drying blood.

"I told you I appreciate it," Shaw said, voice low and gravelly; Root bit back a whine at how much the sound turned her on.

"You appreciate me with a gun but it gets you hot that I'm deadly. It gets you hot that I'm a predator too. No matter how much guilt Harry tried to drum into you, it's instinct. Like recognizes like." Resting her weight on one elbow, Root reached between them to draw a finger right over Shaw's core, lingering for just a moment at her clit. "We're so much alike. We're perfect for each other. I told you that from the start."

Shaw threw her head back in clear invitation and Root withdrew her hand, leaning forward to bit and lick at the offered skin. She grinned against her when she felt Shaw's thighs tighten around her, hips thrusting up as she searched for friction.

"Am I neglecting you, baby?" Root asked sweetly, lifting her body away from Shaw's.

"Get me off or I'll do it myself," Shaw snapped and Root smiled down at her.

"As much fun as that would be to watch, I've got bigger plans."

“Like what?” Shaw bit out, teeth grinding as she thrust her body up into air. Root denied her all of it and sat up, her knees straddling Shaw’s body but raised too high let her have anything like friction.

“You know what?” Root asked, slight pout on her lips. “It’s not the right time for all my plans.”

“Root…” Shaw growled warningly. Root smiled down at her.

“Oh, I’ll get you off, don’t worry about that. But I think I’ll hold off on some of the ideas you’ve given me until we have a little more… freedom,” she said, drawing a line down Shaw’s torso with the edge of her nail. “After all, it would be rude to wake our guest when I make you scream.”

“Fuck,” Shaw muttered, pulling Root down by the waist and flipping them. Root laughed a little breathlessly when she found herself underneath Shaw with Shaw grinding against her thigh, taking her pleasure from Root’s body.

“I love you like this,” Root said, running her nails along every inch of skin she could reach as she watched Shaw desperately chase her own orgasm. “Needy, desperate, even as you think you’re in control.”

“I only think I’m in control, huh?” Shaw asked, grinding down hard to drive the point home. She leaned forward to press the weight of her hands down onto Root’s wrists, holding her in place.

“You do. How much you want me… That’s a loss of control in itself,” Root reminded her, twisting her wrists in Shaw’s grip. “Could you leave this bed right now? Walk away, find your pleasure elsewhere?” Shaw hissed and jerked against Root. “I didn’t think so. You want to know what I have planned for you. You know I can draw every delicious sound from you whether you like it or not. You know no one can make you come like I do.” She had to stop talking then if only because Shaw was kissing her roughly, tongue separating Root’s lips like she wanted to lick the words right out of her mouth. Root flexed her wrists again just to feel Shaw clamp down harder. Root brought her leg up, meeting Shaw’s core with her thigh. Shaw’s hips twisted and jerked, rubbing off on Root’s slick skin. She pulled away to gasp and Root followed, leaning up to say the words right into Shaw’s ear. “Show me how you come for me.”

Shaw’s body shuddered and she grit her teeth, a small gasping moan the only sound that escaped her as she ground down on Root’s body through her orgasm. She flopped down on her back next to Root, thighs quaking every once in a while as Root watched her catch her breath. “You think pretty fucking highly of yourself,” Shaw said eventually, voice rough. Root smiled at her and shrugged.

“I follow my talents. And humility is not something I’ve ever been accused of.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea why I find the idea of Root and kids compelling but here we are.
> 
> The recipe Root made can be found here: https://www.thechunkychef.com/one-pot-chicken-dirty-rice/
> 
> Final chapter coming up.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! It's Christmas! I mean, the last chapter! Actually, it's both!

When Root walked into the penthouse with a firm grip on the trunk of a small Douglas fir that came up to her waist in a metal stand, Shaw looked up from where she was cleaning her rifle to stare at her. Root ignored her, crossing the open space to put it up against the windows. She scooted it around and backed up before returning to fix the tilt that the tree had acquired.

“The hell is that?” Shaw asked and Root shot her an unimpressed look before turning back to fuss at the tree until it sat right.

“What’s it look like, sweetie?” she replied, kneeling to tighten the stand’s grip.

“It looks like you’re expecting me to do Christmas this year,” Shaw muttered. Root turned away from her and the tree, tossing her coat through her open bedroom door.

“I don’t expect anything from you,” Root said breezily, patting Bear’s head when he came to her in greeting, nose twitching. “I’m doing this for me.” Shaw didn’t answer and when Root glanced over, Shaw had turned back to her rifle.

Gen was a little more excited to find the tree when she came out of her room. “Is that a Christmas tree?”

Root smiled. “It’s been a while since any of us had one. And besides,” she said, throwing a glance at Shaw, “I was resurrected. It feels appropriate.” Shaw snorted and muttered something dark about divinity and Root’s smile just grew. “Come on,” she said, holding a hand out to Gen. “I’ve got a box of decorations here. Want to help me put them up?”

 

It felt utterly domestic, Root was realizing belatedly. Her and Shaw, Gen in a room down the hall, cohabitating with Christmas decorations up around them. It frightened her a little even as it filled her with a lightness and a love that almost brought tears to her eyes. So when Shaw stomped out into the snow with Bear, Root packed a bag.

Gen was sitting on the couch when she came out with it. She did a double take when she noticed the bag across Root’s back. “Where are you going?” she asked, dropping her copy of The Odyssey on the table with a soft thud.

“To acquire Shaw’s Christmas present,” Root answered with a wink. “Tell Shaw I’ll call her and I won’t be gone long.”

Root’s plane was landing when Shaw called the first time. By the time she turned her phone back on, there had been three more calls. Root laughed a little as she walked over to the airport’s rental car terminal, pressing the button to return the call. Shaw answered on the first ring.

“Hi, sweetie,” Root chirped before Shaw could get a word out.

“Where the hell are you?” was the gruff reply.

“I’m getting your Christmas present. Didn’t Gen tell you?” She hopped in line, ignoring the glare of the woman in front of her as she tapped her nails against the plastic case of her phone. Root just smiled and twirled a strand of hair around a finger of her free hand.

“She said you left almost seven hours ago and said you wouldn’t be gone long.” Shaw sounded genuinely angry and Root couldn’t really place why. Frowning, she stilled her hands.

“Sameen. I’ll be back within the week,” she said, teasing tone gone. “I really am getting your Christmas present. It’s going to take some time.” She suddenly wished she could see Shaw’s face. No matter how good she was at reading Shaw by voice alone, Root needed physical clues to divine why her girl reacted like she did. When Shaw huffed, Root bit her lip. Maybe this had been a poor choice.

“And you couldn’t tell me yourself before you left?”

“I’m not running off on you, I promise,” Root said, dragging her bag a few feet forward in line. “I told you I’d always come back.”

“Whatever,” Shaw said and Root wasn’t really surprised when her phone beeped at her to inform her that the call had ended. Her heart twisted a little and she kicked herself for the instinct to run that had kept her from saying goodbye to Shaw. She’d given Shaw so much shit about her cowardice but here she was giving into her own.

Getting into the rental car, Root turned it east and drove steadily up the mountain. She’d just have to make this present worth it all.

 

Root had been back for a day and a half, suffering Shaw’s silent treatment until it had thawed into violent, clinging sex, when the Machine whispered a number into her ear. “Sameen,” she called from the couch automatically then stopped as she looked at Gen. Getting to her feet quickly, she met Shaw in the door of their bedroom and pushed her back in.

“We have a new number,” she said, voice low. “I didn’t know what you wanted to do about Gen.” Shaw swore quietly, glancing at the door. She pressed her lips together for a moment then shook her head.

“We can’t just leave whoever this is high and dry. You get into their background, I’ll figure out what to tell the kid. She knows some of the basics anyway.”

Root nodded, grateful for the out. She step up base at her desk, diving into the woman’s social media, cell phone history, and bank records. Noting all the important facts, Root looked at the wedding certificate that had come up and stopped short.

Well. That might be an issue.

When Shaw joined her a little while later, Gen craning to see the monitors over her shoulder, Root started with the basics. “Anya Fyodorova. 34. Stay at home mom to three kids, the oldest of whom is 10. Husband, whose name she did not take, recently released from prison after spending a few years there for dealing, attempted murder, assault, none of which they actually made stick. Husband’s name is Laszlo Yogorov.”

“Motherfucker,” Shaw muttered. “Fucking Russians.”

“They’re the only game in town anymore,” Root reminded her. “It’s understandable that she’d be a target for those who are trying to come up.”

“There are no words for how much I do not want to be involved in _another_ gang war,” Shaw complained; Gen looked back and forth between them as she took in ‘another’.

“Sorry, sweetie. We’re already involved. And you better get a move on if you want to check out her place. Bank account shows she just purchased movie tickets for that new Disney film but I can’t guarantee she’s going to stay to watch it with her kids.”

Shaw grumbled but grabbed her boots to shove them on. “You,” she snapped at Gen. “Stay here. Watch. Learn. Do not get involved no matter what.” Gen nodded earnestly and ran to drag a dining table chair over to Root’s desk. Shaw shoved her .45 into its chest holster before slinging it on, putting a knife in her boot and a 9mm high up her thigh. “Stay,” she ordered one more time before heading out the door.

Root smiled at Gen then winked. “Let’s see if we can’t get a good view of what our girl is going to be walking into,” she said, pulling up the feeds from the traffic cameras and hacking into the webcam on an open laptop as well as into the fancy security system that included a camera that watched the front door. She rolled her eyes; if it had internet to send you video while mobile, it was accessible. Why didn’t people understand this?

“All good, sweetie,” Root told Shaw when she noticed her approach outside. “No one’s home as far as I can tell and I’ve got the alarms turned off. For a mob wife, her security is laughably lax.”

“’As far as you can tell’ is not totally reassuring, Root,” Shaw muttered. Root pouted.

“I can’t make cameras appear inside their place at will, no matter how much I wish I could.”

Shaw didn’t answer and Root watched her approach the door. She was inside in seconds and Root felt a flush of pleasure go through her. Watching her girl work her magic would never get old. Once inside, Shaw moved in and out of the sight of her only camera within, her gaze split between the camera she’d access from across the street and the more up close version.

“You have the USB I gave you?” Root asked, bringing up a new command box.

“Yes, Root, I have your dongle.” Gen giggled and Root rolled her eyes at Shaw’s childish emphasis.

“I don’t think I have to tell you where to stick it, do I?” she teased and heard Shaw huff. Within seconds, she had control of the computer and all the devices connected to its modem. “When will people learn?” she asked, accessing the microphone on a Bluetooth speaker sitting on the kitchen counter. “If you call its name to get its attention, it’s listening all the time.”

“You’re kinda making me want to throw out… basically every electronic I own,” Gen told her, eyebrows raised in something like concern as she watched Root type. Root smiled apologetically.

“Probably not a horrible idea. But I’ll teach you how to protect them later. Lesson one, if it’s got Bluetooth, turn it off.” She pulled up the email accounts open on the computer and shook her head. “Lesson two, log out of stuff.” Running through the emails, she hit on one that looked suspicious. “Well, shit,” Root muttered as she read before raising her voice to catch Shaw’s attention. “Look for anything that could hide a significant amount of cash.”

“No shit,” Shaw muttered. “This isn’t my first search.”

“No,” Root stressed, “but I’m looking at an email arranging a hit on her husband including a dead drop for the money. This is… frankly just sloppy. It’s in the right terms, this is definitely someone who has done this before, but it’s amateurish at best. It’s coming from an address in Brooklyn so they’re local.” She pulled up a name associated with the account and found his picture from there. She was unimpressed.

“I’m not seeing anything in terms of hiding places,” Shaw said, poking around and under. “For a Yogorov, this place isn’t big. There’s not a whole lot of new either. Things are high end but seen some wear. This doesn’t seem like the home of a woman who has an endless supply of cash.”

“Maybe she’s trying to bump her husband off to get more of it?” Root speculated. Shaw moved back to the kitchen and Root could hear her light footsteps on the tile. She heard a heavy clunk against something ceramic and waited for Shaw to share the fruits of her labor.

“There’s a rehearsal dinner tonight. One of the cousins is getting married. Public place, lots of people to alibi her… If something’s going down, I’d bet it’s tonight. All the family will be there.” The magnet clunked again when Shaw put it back in its place and headed for the door. “Now just to get in and save Laszlo. Joy.”

“Something still isn’t sitting right here,” Root said, leaving the window monitoring Anya’s speaker up.

“And we have another problem,” Shaw informed her.

“What,” Root said, not pleased to hear that this whole thing was going to get harder.

“Infil is gonna be a little harder when Peter Yogorov knows my face. It was a few years ago but I doubt he’s gonna forget someone who used him as a blood bank.”

Root blinked a few times. “… Why?”

“I got shot,” she said simply. Of course. She got shot. That explained everything.

Root twisted her lips in annoyance. “We’ll figure it out.”

 

‘Figure it out’ had really meant that Shaw and Gen would play support while Root went in. Shaw reacted to the proposed plan about as Root expected she would: with anger.

“No way in hell,” she said and Root frowned at her.

“You know I can handle myself. And besides, it’s a mob wedding with a sloppy assassin coming to crash it. It’s not like I’m rappelling into a Samaritan stronghold.” She turned back to her closet, assessing the dresses hanging there to see which one would fit best under the catering uniform. Just in case.

“No, you’ve already done that and I had to pedal all the way into New Jersey to save your ass,” Shaw snapped, leaning against the doorjamb. Root gave her a shy smile.

“You did, didn’t you?” Shaw made a disgusted noise and turned away. “Anyway, this is just in Brooklyn. And I’ll have my comms on. Since when are you this worried about a pitiful assassin anyway?” she asked as she quickly braided her hair then wrapped it up into a bun. “Not to put too fine a point on it but I’m still one of the scariest things out there.”

“Yeah yeah, you’ve got a god in your ear and helped bring down another one.”

“And I had an entire army after me pretty much the entire time you were with Decima. If I can’t handle one number on my own, my chances of seeing 40 are pretty slim.”

“They already were.” Root turned to look at her but Shaw had her back to Root, watching Gen peeking at Root’s computer like it held the secrets to the universe. “They were slim and that you’re standing here at all is luck.”

“We’ve all had close calls, sweetie,” Root said gently, approaching her slowly.

“But I mourned you,” Shaw bit out, tone almost vicious. Root nodded.

“And we mourned you. I refused to believe you were gone but months went by and I had to accept the possibility. We both know the rules of this game. We both eventually end up dead. A good end is all I ask. And,” she said, brightening back into perky tones as she pressed a kiss to Shaw’s cheek, “no way is some jackass who can’t even encrypt his IP going to bring me down.”

She ingratiated herself to the catering crew easy enough, throwing a nod and a smile to a few people as if they were acquaintances she’d seen on a job before. Taking over a table maintenance position, she traveled the room refilling water and wine cups, taking empty bread baskets and bringing back full ones. It allowed her to listen to the conversations happening around the room, focusing especially on Anya and Laszlo. As couples went, they seemed amicable if not hopelessly in love. Root imagined they didn’t know each other quite as they had used to before Laszlo had spent his time behind bars. Peter Yogorov sat a few seats down from his brother and watched the proceedings in the room without emotion, taking in the people milling around.

He had his own security, Root was sure. But the number wouldn’t have come up if everything was going fine in Bratvagrad.

When Peter and Laszlo got to their feet a few minutes apart and exited from the same door, she slipped out after them. “Careful,” Shaw reminded her, voice filtering in through the earpiece.

“Worried about me?” she teased, mic barely picking her up.

“You’re the best damn grifter I’ve ever seen,” Shaw said as Root took up a spot around the corner from where the Yogorov brothers stood talking. She preened a little at Shaw’s words. “You can talk your way out of pretty much anything. But they’re dangerous, even if Laszlo’s the victim.”

“The best?” Root heard Gen ask from a bit away. “Even better than you?”

“She fooled me. I never even saw her coming and I was on my guard the whole time.” Shaw sounded… almost proud of the way Root had threatened her with a hot iron, and she tried to not make any noise to give herself away as she grinned. She turned her attention back to the brothers but they were only talking business, a drug shipment scheduled to hit the port early the next morning. Hearing a footstep, Root walked towards them and bumped right into Laszlo.

“Oh I am so sorry!” she exclaimed, her hands going to his shoulders as he caught her waist to steady her. “I wasn’t watching where I was going. I got so turned around in these tunnels. Do you know which way the kitchen is?”

“Yeah, it’s just around the next corner,” Laszlo said, smiling at her. She returned it, letting gratitude flood her features even as Peter watched the scene impassively.

“Thank you so much,” she gushed. “Sorry again.” She turned the corner and waited until she couldn’t hear footsteps anymore. “Sweetie?” she called. “Do you know how to pull up the feeds from our bugs?”

“Of course you did,” Shaw said but it was colored by admiration and Root smirked.

“What can I say?”

But as she walked back into the ballroom, there wasn’t much to say as the lights flickered and went out a few seconds after she entered the door. Pulling her gun, she darted to where she had last seen Anya and Laszlo and found the assassin with his weapon leveled at Anya as she put herself between him and her husband. Reacting quickly to the obvious changes to their operational understanding, Root slammed into the assassin hard, knocking him over the table with a crash of tableware and a ringing bang as the muzzle of the gun flashed through the dark.

Root grabbed Anya’s hand and practically dragged her out of the room, Anya dragging Laszlo behind her. “Shaw, it wasn’t Anya. She was framed. Whoever this is wanted them both dead.” They turned a corner, Root navigating mostly based on memory as the halls were almost completely dark. “Do you ever get tired of me being right?” Root asked Shaw, panting as she pulled Anya and Laszlo to safety. “I told you something was off.”

“Who are you talking to?!” Laszlo demanded, even as he followed her through the service tunnels under the venue. “Who are you?!”

“I’m the one who figured out that there’s an assassin after you both. Someone hired him, tried badly to frame Anya, and now wants you both out. It’s truly elaborate really, even though it’s sloppy as hell. Who did you manage to piss off so badly?”

“You want a list?” Anya asked, heels in her hands as they ran down concrete corridors. Root smiled even as she hung a sharp corner. She had decided she liked Anya.

“Really? You want to start that right now?” he asked and Root rolled her eyes but tuned him out in favor of a higher power.

“There’s a car waiting outside. I’ll deal with the driver, you just get in the back. Go!” She turned when she heard heavy running footsteps behind them and found their assassin friend rounding that same corner. The hallway was lit only by the red glow of the exit sign and the orange light of the street lamps outside as it poured through the windows in the doors. Root pulled the trigger and took him out at the knee, her .45 tearing muscle and tendon as he went down. She had to give him credit on being a fighter when he reached for the gun again and she had to put a matching hole through his hand. Leaving him, she ran out to the parking lot to find the couple and the driver of the car yelling at each other.

Heading over to the driver’s car door, she fired two quick shots into the ground. The driver jumped and practically dove out of the car. “Thank you for your cooperation,” she chirped as she took his seat. “Can you head to the assassin’s place, sweetie?” she asked Shaw. “I’ve got both targets and their would-be killer is probably going to need a few pints of blood and some physical therapy before he gets back.”

“What about Gen?” Shaw asked and Root winced even as she tore down the street. At least it was helping to take her mind off the fact that her hands were shaking on the wheel.

“That’s up to you.”

Shaw had apparently decided to let Gen see the entire inside of their operation because she was at the safe house when Root herded the two in the front door. “Sit,” she ordered them both, “and try to figure out who wants you both dead.” She smiled at Gen who was perched on the arm of the couch. “Didn’t want to stay home?”

“And miss all the action? No way!”

Root shook her head but tapped on her comms. “Any luck out your way?”

“If by luck, you mean I stumbled over a big-ass duffle full of cash then yeah. But that doesn’t necessarily help us unless you want to run touch DNA on every single bill.” Root frowned as she pulled out the laptop Harold kept in a desk drawer.

“Not so much.” The computer flared to life under her fingers as Shaw caught her attention.

“Well, hello there. Root. There’s methyl chloroform on… basically everything in his kitchen… And bathroom. Fuck, I’m getting out of here. But someone did not intend for this assassin to survive either. They wanted him to ingest this shit.”

“Best way to shut him up,” Root reminded her, pulling up all the information they’d found on him. “No bank accounts that I can find, probably why he gets paid in cash. It’s all very 80s. Russian hit man, Russian mob, framing the wife… Oh. Wife.” She stopped and went into the information about his ex-wife. “Yurlova…” She stood up, bringing the computer with her, and smacked it down on the table. “Any reason Nikolai Yurlov would want you dead?” Laszlo and Anya looked at each other and Root remembered, suddenly, violently, that Shaw had walked into an apartment drenched in a lethal chemical for their sakes. She tilted her head at them, voice turning sickly sweet. “You might want to offer up something helpful here before I decide saving you really isn’t worth my time.”

Anya paled but said, “His sister was my best friend. She ran off with some monster, came back to her brother pregnant. I tried to help her to get away from them both. Her brother wasn’t any less controlling than the beast she married. But I failed and she miscarried from the stress. The depression from losing the child and being locked up by her brother… She couldn’t take it. He blames me. And Laszlo is in his way. He’s Peter’s heir but Nikolai is his right hand.”

“This is an internal power struggle?” Root asked, shaking her head. “Of course it is. You,” she said, turning to Laszlo, “need to call your brother. I assume he’d want to handle internal matters internally.”

A few hours later, Shaw was handing off the less-than-happy couple to a less-than-happy brother with a streak of blood at his collar. Peter nodded to Shaw and Shaw gave him a two finger salute. Root watched the display of mutual respect on Harold’s laptop from the balcony of the safe house, Gen wrapped in a blanket next to her.

“Are they all like this? All of your cases?” Gen asked, shivering. “The Bratva?”

“The mob, the spouses, the cops, business partners… We get it all. We help people.”

Gen nodded and snuggled deeper. “I want to help people,” she announced. Root decided to let the kid tell Shaw that one all on her own.

 

Root hummed along to the Kossoy Sisters singing “I’ll Fly Away” as it played on the movie Gen had to watch for homework. Painting her nails, she sat cross-legged on the floor with her hands on the table. Shaw was on the couch behind her, sprawled out with one foot hanging over the edge. Root wondered if she could get away with painting Shaw’s toes before she noticed but knew the chances of her not getting kicked for the trouble were slim to none.

She glanced at Gen, who was watching the screen intently with a notebook and pencil in her hand. Every few seconds, she’d make a note and then her eyes would dart back to the screen.

“Why are you watching this again?” Shaw asked as a man screamed horribly and yelled at his companions to stop the car.

“My English teacher is making us. She said that watching a movie over break would be better than pretty much any other assignment she gave us. And we’ve been reading the Odyssey.”

“What does this…” Shaw gestured at the screen where three women sat in a river singing, “have to do with ancient Greece?”

“It’s based on the Odyssey. See, these are the sirens that caused Odysseus’s crew to stray from his path.” Gen turned back to the movie with intense focus, pencil at the ready. Root spread her fingers out over the table’s surface to let them dry then leaned her head back so she could look at Shaw.

“Honey in the rock and the sugar don’t stop, gonna bring a bottle to the baby,” she murmured along with the singers on the screen. Shaw looked down at her and dragged her teeth across her bottom lip.

“You know this song?” Shaw asked, gaze intent on her. Root bit her lip as she grinned.

“I grew up on all these songs.” Root turned her whole body, rolling up onto her knees and putting her hands on Shaw’s thighs. “You and me and the devil make three, don’t need no other lovin’ baby,” she sang along. Shaw swallowed and leaned forward. They both stopped when they heard a paper rip and Root jumped when a crumpled ball of paper collided with the side of her skull.

“Get a room!” Gen demanded. “Some of us are trying to work!” Shaw snorted and Root had to put her face into the fabric of the couch to muffle her own laugh, her forehead catching on Shaw’s thigh.

“I think I liked her better when she was too uncertain of us to give orders,” Root told Shaw. Gen glared at them both, shoulders hunched protectively around her notebook as she turned back to the movie. “And after all the presents I bought her too,” she said, taking on a false wistfulness. Gen gave her a side glance but didn’t say anything and Root had to bite back a smile. “Speaking of,” Root said, slapping her hand flat on the table to help her get to her feet while scaring Gen at the same time, “I’ve got things to wrap.” She grabbed the roll of wrapping paper from where it leaned against her desk and headed to her bedroom to get some of the presents under the tree.

Wrapping up Gen’s with ease if not grace, Root turned to the more nerve-wracking of Shaw’s presents. She wasn’t sure how it was going to be received, especially after the last time she had given Sameen a set of keys, but she knew she had to do it if just for her own peace of mind. Fishing the little key out of the lining of her bag, she pressed it into a small box before wrapping both box and the key within.

She placed the wrapped packages under the tree and settled down to watch the end of the movie with her girls, hoping she hadn’t ruined it all by trying to provide for Shaw’s future.

Two days until Christmas. She’d find out then.

 

Root greeted dawn on a snowy Christmas morning with coffee and breakfast and more than a little anxiety. There was a stack of poorly wrapped presents under the tree with messy labels on them, except for one that was only a plain cardboard box with duct tape over the top and “Root” scribbled on the side in Shaw’s doctor’s scrawl and one wrapped neatly. The smell of food woke Shaw just as she knew it would and Shaw squinted at the sunny orange haze that managed to peek through the thick clouds. She gestured at the coffee pot as she sat down on the ground, letting Bear crawl into her lap.

“Merry Christmas, buddy,” she said even as Root handed her a mug with a pout. Shaw just looked up her with a challenge in the tilt of her smile and Root had to smile back.

“Good morning,” Gen said with a yawn, padding across the floor in sleep pants and a baggy sweatshirt. “Merry Christmas.” She sat down next to Shaw on the floor, sitting cross-legged with her hands in the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

Root shook her head at the sight but brought them both a cinnamon roll, making a second trip for her own and joining them on the floor. Christmas breakfast was apparently going to be done picnic style. Gen mumbled her thanks and turned bleary eyes out the window at the snow-covered cityscape. Shaw was done with her roll in less than 5 bites and nudged Bear off so she could acquire another.

They sat in silence for a while, the only sound their chewing and Bear occasionally licking his lips while he watched them eat. When Shaw nudged him off again, she went into the kitchen and came back with a bucket of new toys and a few chews. He sat up eagerly, tongue lolling out, and took off when she set a ball bouncing off the floors. “Merry Christmas, handsome,” she said, patting his back when he brought the ball back. She tossed it again before heading over to the tree, sorting the packages under it by label. Gathering a stack, she brought them over and set them in front of Gen. “Merry Christmas, kid,” she said gruffly before settling back down on the ground.

Gen’s eyes lit up before she smiled shyly. “You guys didn’t have to get me anything. You’ve been so nice already and I-”

“Stop with the Miss Manners act and just rip into ‘em like we all know you want to,” Shaw said before taking another gulp of her coffee. Bear came back and settled at Gen’s side. She patted him once before ripping open the top package. Pulling out a cloth case, she shrieked and held it to her chest.

“Is this a lock pick set?” she demanded and Root grinned.

“Professional grade, manual and automatic. You should probably get familiar with both,” Root recommended with a wink. Gen hugged it close again before setting it behind her and moving on to the next. The paper was a different color and looked professionally done. Unless Shaw had skills Root wasn’t aware of, she had gone somewhere with gift wrapping.

The bright red paper gave way to a cardboard box that held a few books, the topmost of which was called _The Big Con_. It was followed by _Spy the Lie_ and _The Like Switch_. “Since you’re a nerd who likes to read so much, learn a little something about grifting,” Shaw muttered into her coffee.

“Thanks, Shaw,” Gen said earnestly.

“Yeah, whatever,” she replied. Gen and Root shared a commiserating glance as she moved on to her last present. It was in a small box. Root was a little anxious how Shaw would take this one too. Gen pulled off the paper and flipped open the box to find a little black stun gun nestled amongst tissue paper. Taking it out with an enthusiasm that delighted Root, Gen flipped it over and over, examining it from every angle.

“Cool!” she breathed. Root glanced at Shaw to find her watching Root with a small crooked smile. They turned back to Gen when they heard the telltale crackle. “This is so awesome.”

“Just don’t jab me in the neck with it,” Shaw told her and Root had to duck her head to hide the laugh she really didn’t want to have to explain.

“OK, your turn!” Gen said, putting the weapon down before scooting over to the tree. She pushed the big box over to Root before pushing two smaller boxes towards Shaw. “Root first, I want to see what’s in there.” Root laughed but complied, wriggling the edge of the duct tape until she could rip the entire thing off. She flipped it open to find four guns waiting for her.

Girlish excitement flooded her as she picked up the nearest one. She took in the beavertail on the back, the 4 inch barrel, and “SIG SAUER” stamped on the grip. She ejected the mag before sliding it back in and chambering a round. “It’s gorgeous, look at it.” Its twin lay next to it and she ran her fingers over it before picking up one of the .45s behind it. “I love them, thank you,” Root said, turning to Shaw who looked away uncomfortably.

“Yeah. I mean, if you’re going back into the field whether I like it or not, you should at least be carrying a weapon you can trust,” Shaw said, still not looking her in the eye. Gen looked back and forth between them before nudging Shaw’s presents with her foot.

“Your turn,” she reminded her and Shaw sighed.

“Which of these did you disappear for?” Shaw asked but ripped open the bigger one. Root just grinned, leaning back on her hands. Shaw tugged open the box to find an Uzi; her eyes went from the gun to Root then back to the gun while Root tried not to giggle. “Hello, pretty,” she said, running her hands over the edges.

“You guys are friggin’ weird,” Gen informed them. “Who buys guns for Christmas?”

“Hey. You want to be an operative, right? Appreciation for a good weapon is necessary and will save your ass more than once,” Shaw snapped but her gaze still rested softly on the automatic weapon.

“Or you just like shooting people,” Gen said and Root shrugged, a faux casual movement that didn’t hide her joy.

“She’s not wrong, Sam.”

Shaw rolled her eyes but moved on to the next box. She eyed Root suspiciously and Root’s heart pounded in her chest as Shaw removed the paper and slid the top off. Shaw stopped still and Root’s stomach lurched. She pulled out the key slowly and held it up in the light.

“That’s what I had to acquire for you,” Root said, voice a little strained as she struggled to breathe normally. “In case things ever get Samaritan-bad again. You have somewhere you can go.”

“You got me a safe house?” Shaw asked, voice low. Root swallowed.

“I did. Somewhere off the grid, somewhere no one could find you. Just in case.”

Gen got up and started gathering the paper off the floor, shoving it into a garbage bag and not looking at either of them. Shaw didn’t even glance at her as she stared Root down.

“You want me to hide again?”

“I want you to be safe,” Root said, exasperated. “No matter what happens, I _need_ you to be safe.”

Shaw didn’t say anything, just nodded. They sat in silence for a little while as the sun rose higher as it broke through the clouds. Root tried not to let fear overcome her and just waited for Shaw to break the silence.

“Thank you,” Shaw said a few minutes later before getting up and walking into their bedroom. When she came out again a few moments later, Root saw a glint of silver at Shaw’s throat and caught the key hanging like a pendant on a chain around her neck. She turned her smile to the floor in order to not embarrass them both and delighted in the butterflies in her stomach.

 

Later that afternoon, Gen had taken her books into her bedroom and closed the door soundly. “Apparently she likes them,” Root mumbled to herself as she turned to the sink to take care of the dishes piling up. She didn’t look up as she heard Shaw’s footsteps come up behind her nor did she turn as she heard Shaw leap on to the island with ease. Continuing to scrub at the sticky cinnamon on the baking dish that had held that morning’s breakfast, she waited for Shaw to speak. When she did, Root almost dropped the glass dish.

“Are you happy?” Shaw said suddenly. Her tone wasn’t sullen like Root would have expected on those words; it wasn’t even apathetic. If she had to put a name to it, she would have said it sounded… concerned.

“Where did that come from?” Root asked, her own voice light.

“I don’t know,” Shaw said. They were both silent for a minute before Shaw continued. “I can’t read you. I wasn’t lying when I said you’re the best grifter I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what’s real with you.” The words snatched Root’s breath out of her chest in an instant.

“I’m always real with you,” she said carefully and Shaw gave an aggravated sigh.

“No, that’s not what I… Look at me.” Root hesitated but turned. “I don’t think you’re faking any of this. I don’t think you’re treating me like a mark. But I can’t read you. I suck at feelings, at all this shit. I’m a sociopath; even remembering other people have feelings is a fucking struggle. But with you, you can show me any face you want to. So you gotta give me a straight, honest answer here. Are you happy?”

Root stopped to really consider it all, to give a truly honest answer, and didn’t that feel bizarre. She couldn’t meet Shaw’s eyes when she answered. “I’m trying to be real again. I’m trying to find out what’s… left. Under all the roles and the running, under who I had to be in Her service. I’m not a mercenary anymore. I’m not a soldier. I’m not a protector like you. I’m not a civilian like Harold or a cop like Lionel. I don’t know who the hell I am. But I’m trying to find out.” Looking up to catch Shaw watching her intently, she tried a smile. “So to answer your question whether I’m happy, here, with this, with you… Absolutely.” She took a few hesitant steps forward to place her hands on either side of Shaw’s neck, tipping Shaw’s chin up with her thumbs to press a sweet kiss to her lips. “Incandescently,” she said with a small smile. Kissing her again, she whispered, “Unconditionally.” And then she spoke no more because Shaw was kissing her hard and no words mattered more than that.

 

When Gen had to return to school, Root was more than a little disappointed. She had come to really like the girl, teaching her, hearing her insights. Wondering absently if that’s what parenthood felt like, she hugged Gen tight before releasing her to go back to her mundane life as a high school freshman. After extorting a promise that she could spend spring break with them, Gen waved at them from the school’s porch until they drove around the bend and she disappeared behind the wooded lawn.

They had a few numbers after that, including a memorable one with an older woman who was the last holdout in a rent-controlled building. Shaw had come home smelling like cat and Bear had sniffed her after for hours.

Shaw just blinked at her on a day off when Root handed her a plane ticket.

“I think it’s time to see your Christmas present, don’t you?”

They flew into northern Nevada and Shaw looked around as they stepped off the plane. “Yeah, this seems like a good place for it,” she said, derision practically dripping off her. “No one would come looking here for anyone with sense.”

Root rolled her eyes. “I’m glad you’re so pleased with it. But unfortunately, we’ve got a bit of a drive still.”

Erin Borg rented a car and they started west over the Sierra Nevadas. “Only you would want to drive through the mountains when it’s as snowy as this.”

“Clearly not, judging by the traffic,” Root said, eyeing the semis that took the eastbound curves a little tighter than seemed safe. They passed a sign welcoming them to California and Shaw raised an eyebrow.

“Your safe house is in the sparsely populated state of California?” she asked and Root gave her a look.

“It’s not all LA or San Francisco, Sam.”

Shaw nodded, expression turning serious. “It is where my mom lives now though. You didn’t-”

“I would never spring that on you. Or her,” Root hurried to assure her. “If you want to get in contact, I get it and I’ll help if you want. But that’s entirely up to you.” Shaw nodded and they continued in silence for a while, Root watched the bright sun glint of the snowpack on the side of the road. “Donner Summit,” she said eventually, catching a sign. “The Donner Party came through here.”

“So long as we don’t get stuck like they did, I don’t care,” Shaw said, shoulders hunched as the snowpack grew higher around them, casting long shadows.

“And here I was thinking it was fitting. After all, I’m on this journey with the only person I’m interested in eating,” Root teased with a flutter of her eyelashes. Shaw shot her a quick wide-eyed glance before turning back to the road, shock clear in her entire body’s posture.

“No,” Shaw said firmly and Root laughed. “No. You are banned from speaking for the rest of this trip. That’s how bad that was.”

“Sam…” Root began but Shaw cut her off.

“You’re still talking.” Root laughed again but obediently pressed her lips together.

They drove in silence for a bit until Root asked, “How are you going to get where we’re going if I can’t speak?” Shaw didn’t answer, twisting her lips into something like a grimace.

“Fuck,” she muttered eventually and Root tipped her head back against the seat and grinned up at the blue sky.

 

Root led them to a house deep in the foothills of the mountain range where snow crunched underfoot instead of towering overhead. The house was small and cabin style and Root noted with satisfaction the newly installed solar panels and external generator, as well as the small area that had been cleared and raised for a garden. She let Shaw open the door with the key she had worn since Christmas.

The place smelled like cedar, woodsy and clean. It was mostly empty, bare of furniture except a small round dining table that sat under a window next to the kitchen. There was however a stove, a fridge, and a sink, enough to be getting on with. There were two empty bedrooms back behind the kitchen and Root showed Shaw up into the loft where there was a bedroom set up.

“It’s completely off the grid, self-sustaining, and should be ready to produce its own food this spring. Have you ever been much a gardener, Sameen? I’ve heard it’s therapeutic.” She was rambling and she knew it but she still couldn’t read Shaw’s reaction as she looked around the house. Shaw hadn’t said a word since they stepped in, had listened to Root chatter about how she had gotten it up to all her standards with only the occasional nod. “So?” she asked, placing her hands behind her back as she turned to Shaw so she couldn’t see them twisting with her nerves. “A good Christmas present?”

Shaw nodded and took a few steps closer to Root, who smiled eagerly if nervously. Putting one hand on Root’s throat, fingers gentle against Root’s skin in a way she wasn’t quite used to, she pulled Root to her and kissed her.

“Yeah, Root. It’s a good present.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they lived happily ever after. The End.
> 
> OK, it's over. Two months of this thing taking over my brain and now it's out in the world. Everybody, deep breath. Thank you for going on this ride with me. I hope you enjoyed it. A huge thank you once again to my betas and Ellie, my handholder and cheerleader.
> 
> One last bump of the playlist I made because it's a lot of fun and other thanks for reading. [https://8tracks.com/flyingwide/godel-s-incompleteness-theorems-root-shaw]()


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